It continues to be aired – we saw it while watching an Indiana University basketball game Thursday – and it continues to draw comment, as witnessed by this piece in Motley Fool.
We agree it seeks to play off consumer concerns over high fructose corn syrup. But that’s fair enough, we think. It’s perfectly right and proper to point out product differences between yourself and your competitor. And, really, that’s the only thing Bud Light did. Bud Light is made with rice syrup. Miller Lite and Coors Light are made with corn syrup.
Bud Light didn’t say corn syrup was bad. It just said its competitors use corn syrup and it doesn’t.
If MillerCoors is concerned that may hurt sales of it two leading light beers, it needs to run spots explaining why, unlike HFCS, corn syrup is nothing to worry about. If it wants to get nasty, it can point out that rice has some arsenic in it.
The Motley Fool commentary ends by arguing that “by insinuating that corn syrup the competition uses is bad, Anheuser-Busch may have instead hastened the erosion of support for its own leading brew. And that’s the last thing AB needs to do right now.”
If it does lead to erosion of support for Bud Light by people in the Midwest, that may be the unintended consequence of moving the marketing department to Manhattan. Folks in the Midwest would instinctively view it as an attack on farmers and corn processors. Sophisticates in New York, surrounded by miles and miles of asphalt and concrete might not.
Footnote: While some media says Bud Light has “backed away from its apparent anti-corn stance following backlash from the corn lobby,” the fact is the spot continues to run. We saw it this (Sunday) afternoon during the Indiana-Ohio State basketball game on CBS.