In 2015 Bud Light put out an advertisement that said that to ‘remove no from your vocabulary.’ This is found on the labels of their beers and is part of there ‘up for whatever’ campaign. Anheuser-Busch said that the advertisement was meant to be a fun way of promoting their 'Up For Whatever' campaign. They meant for it to promote young drinkers to try new things. However, this is not how this was received. This advertisement promotes binge drinking and rape culture. No should always mean no. No should not mean go for it especially when drinking is involved. Drinking can lead to dangerous behavior such as rape or drinking and driving. Anheuser-Busch is a very wealthy international company. They should have more than enough resources to ensure that their message comes across as what they mean it to. Anheuser-Busch has more than enough money and power to hire a marketing department and research all their endeavors thoroughly. They should have done focus groups to determine how the public should react to this. The strategy the marketers were going for was having fun, however what they turned out was promotion of dangerous behavior. Bud Light did apologize for this advertisement and say that they missed the mark, however for a company with that much power the promotion of binge drinking and rape is unacceptable.
Emily,
ReplyDeleteYes, this campaign is definitely promoting Rape Culture and takes on a significantly disturbing message when considering the high rates of sexual assault on college campuses nationwide. In your final two posts, please incorporate specific concepts from the readings to connect your posts more explicitly to the texts.