Budweiser Pulls slogan accused of "Promoting Rape culture"

So... Only feminists can use the word "no" now?

Not that I agree with the booze advert, pretty much all drugs are better than booze. In fact, if you want to remove "no" from your sexual vocabulary, there's only one way: the ipt141 way. Although that's an injectable peptide, which i think would make its use as a an involuntary libido stimulant very unlikely.

You are right, Senan, I should not cast judgment so quickly; this is one of the aspects of myself I am working on changing. After some reflection on my answer, I believe I fell into the mob mentality that I brought up, contradicting myself and seeming self-righteous.

Removing myself from the mob mentality, I do still think this campaign is a horrible mistake for two reasons:

1) I believe there is going to be someone, somewhere, who will take this message as a justification of their past or future actions. This kind of thinking can be seen throughout history, as it is part of the human self and reasoning process. I know it sounds extreme, but this kind of blind justification is very common in today's world.

2) It is a terrible business decision. Budweiser is a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch, a respectable, old company that has been in operation since the 19th century. This business decision will make the Budweiser brand a target for people, such as myself, who have a bad habit of falling into the mob mentality. What this will do to competitors, who knows? Maybe competitors will be smart and learn from the mistake made by the Budweiser team, or maybe they wont heed the warning of the hypersensitive mob and make a similar mistake.

I completely agree with you about the problem of profound sensitivity, and the creation of Boogeymen to blame our personal faults on. I hope that we can move past that as a society.

Humble wrote: This kind of thinking can be seen throughout history, as it is part of the human self and reasoning process.

This behavious shows itself in many different ways be it in a social, political, religious or even in gaming communities or the endless, inane PC/Mac war and it makes me wonder if the human brain is hardwired to do this. Was it once part of a survival strategy for the species where you blindly followed the tribe's path no matter what simply to ensure the continued survival of the tribe?
Of course, today our tribes are much more diverse and often scattered which has lead to fewer of the torches and pitchfork-styled mobs but the mentality persists. Have we become more sensitive as a whole or are we reacting to an urge as old as humans themselves?

I kind of feel that now we are more sensitive, but to other people's lives. We're more accepting and appreciative of people's lives and their individual selves. It's born from understanding, I think. I don't personally think this is a negative thing. Perhaps the overreaction is not those who are objecting, but dismissing straight off those who do object. Just a thought.

Wow. Good catch. If it offends one, it's offensive. It's funny to me to think that a downer, a depressant as popular as alcohol is blamed for a lot. If I found a pill that had all the effects of alcohol I would be more cautious in using it... aka zanex is being monitored very carefully in the current time in present. Full choice. U take u get consequences. Personal responsibility seems to be needed with this one lol

Edan wrote: I kind of feel that now we are more sensitive, but to other people's lives. We're more accepting and appreciative of people's lives and their individual selves. It's born from understanding, I think. I don't personally think this is a negative thing.

I think that is true, but I also believe that people are more sensitive about themselves too. I think people take offense rather quickly even when it isn't meant, at least some do. My father has had people shut down his attempts to teach a women's self defense class (with the assistance of my step-mom and several of our female students) because they thought that it was "victim blaming." Like saying that by not taking the class women were "asking for it." That's an example of too sensitive.

My thoughts on the whole thing: People are overreacting, but Budweiser should have seen that coming. They didn't mean to say anything wrong, but someone should have assumed that people would take it that way. I think their whole "Up for anything" campaign is a little misguided but I get why they do it and it makes sense for a beer ad. I think that that particular slogan probably shouldn't have been used but that it isn't really that big of a deal.

Maybe that should be a job at advertising agencies, Offense Monitors. People who's sole job is to think of how people might get offended by ads, then determine if it's worth pulling the ad or just letting it run. As we know, everything will offend someone no matter how hard we try.

carlos.martinez3 wrote: If I found a pill that had all the effects of alcohol I would be more cautious in using it...

Just add water.

Wow, I feel for that guy. This proves my thoughts on that the minority run the show. Not the single nationalities but the few who speak out on things. The power is in those who say....somthing.

Goken wrote: Maybe that should be a job at advertising agencies, Offense Monitors. People who's sole job is to think of how people might get offended by ads, then determine if it's worth pulling the ad or just letting it run. As we know, everything will offend someone no matter how hard we try.

A lot of ad agencies do have this position. In fact, it's an entire department. They conduct focus groups, not only to test the product itself, but the messages used to promote it and advertise it. Often PR positions are included in this department that try to anticipate public reaction to ad campaigns and determine what the appropriate response should be. Many companies (including mine) also have lawyers on retainer who spend all day looking for reasons they might get sued. This pretty much ruins the chance of anything fun or creative ever leaving the building, but it does protect the company from bad press or litigation.

Anheuser Busch has these safeguards and they failed on a number of accounts here, but I don't think it was in the initial choice to include this message on the bottle. I believe the failures were in not having the foresight to anticipate a possible negative reaction and being prepared to properly address it. They could have encouraged two-way discourse with the public and then used it to educate people on the issue of rape culture and how it may or may not relate to alcohol and advertising. They also could have gone on the offensive and asked for any connection between their ad campaign, specifically that bottle message, and the effectiveness of the "no means no" campaign in preventing rape. I think they would've have found that the general public would find absolutely no connection between the two unless it was suggested to them.

Instead, they immediately apologized and removed the message, which effectively admitted wrong doing and accepted blame. The mob continues to pile on and condemn Anheuser Busch despite the public apology. Sadly, they allowed what was an extremely effective and very creative ad campaign to be tarnished and thus rendered ineffective to many consumers. Millions of dollars down the drain because of threatened litigation.

The only hope for them now is that the extremely short attention span of the public will allow this whole thing to slip away rather quickly. Then they can go back to warm and fuzzy ads with Clydesdales and adorable puppies welcoming home soldiers. Or maybe someone will decide that those commercials glorify war or take advantage of horses and we won't be allowed to see those anymore either. :dry:

ive heard that bud is considered decent beer overseas - i dont know if thats true or not

what i will say which is both tactful and fairly accurate is that in america, pretty much no one who deliberately drinks budweiser is going to stop drinking budweiser because of this situation

so they may have lost a bunch of money - but i expect that they havent lost their customer base