The Michael Berry Show

I used to think that the cultural wars were unimportant. Silly, a distraction. I've come to

understand that if you don't fight that battle there, and when, then you lose the heart and soul of your nation, and you lose the will to fight.

Now, an interesting thing happened with this Bud Light issue, a very interesting thing, because here was a product whose brand manager referred to their marketing as being fratty. I would argue here was a fratty product.

Here was a product that had built an image and a brand that was powerful, and when you poked the people that built that image and brand as consumers in the eye, they reacted and not very happily.

Our guest is Anson Ferriks. He I'll read a line from the Wall Street Journal editorial that he wrote. It wasn't always this way. I worked at Anheuser Bush for 11 years, rising to US president of sales and distribution before leaving in 2022.

The firm was focused on increasing shareholder value and did so in part by offering a high quality and at the time decidedly a political product. Bud Light, Anson, what changed?

Michael, thanks for having me on this show, and unfortunately a lot changed over the last 11 years. One of the things that initially got this ball going is that in 2018, Anheuser Bush decided instead of focusing on its shareholders, its firefighters, the police officers, doctors, either the 401Ks or pension programs that invest in the company expected the company to be able to create great products and services for its customers, instead adopt an ideology of stakeholder capitalism.

Stakeholder capitalism is pushed by companies like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard. That says that you need to start prioritizing people like activists, political organizations, other stakeholders in your organization.

And those stakeholders, they ask you to adopt certain ideologies that are devices, things like DE and I, ESG, environmental, social governance goals, those take priorities over serving your customers and creating great products and services that generate shareholder value.

Unfortunately, that's how Anheuser Bush got themselves in the situation, instead of focusing on their customer to your other point, just giving them, hey, Bud Light, you want to be apolitical, maybe it's a little fratty, that's what Bud Light does.

Now, the sudden they're serving them up with a side of politics, that's not what Bud Light consumers want, and unfortunately the companies stay in the price.

Hanson, when you, as a 22 year employee, I'm sorry, as 11 year employee who had been president of sales and distribution up until last year, when you saw the story hit of Dylan Mulvaney, and how they were pitching that, and you saw the video of Alyssa Hammershide, Heinershide talking about, you know, this brand and changing it and really criticizing where the brand had been.

Before you spoke to anyone else, what was your immediate gut reaction?

My immediate gut reaction was this is not going to be good for the company, and unfortunately the company's not going to handle this the right way, and I'll be clear about that as the why.

Now, about seven years ago, the company moved, it sales and marketing organization out of St. Louis, Missouri, where it had been for over 100 years, and I think probably had a much better handle on who the Bud Light consumer is, the middle of the country, who their core consumer is.

They moved all of that to New York City, and then New York City, they hired a lot of people that are from New York City, people that are from the East Coast, they have a lot of their advertising firms and marketing agencies also based in New York City, and therefore a lot of their thinking is exactly what it is in downtown New York City, which tends to be a very progressive view of the world.

They have adopted a lot of these ideologies, ESG, D E and I, so when I initially saw it, I wasn't actually surprised that they had gone down this path of adopting put it as people, but more importantly I was concerned about how are they going to respond, and where they going to say, hey, you know what, this is a mistake, we made a mistake in this marketing campaign, we're not serving our customers, or were they going to say, and almost like double down triple down, but they've really done.

I think that's been more my surprise, that they've doubled down triple down, not saying this was a mistake, but saying, hey guys, this is an influencer, this should be a tempest and a pint glass, I say, that this is one can, but that's not the world we live in, when it's one influencer that has tens of millions of people, those tens of millions of people don't necessarily aren't necessarily the Bud Light typical consumer, that costs problems for a brand that have become the largest beer brand in the US because it has been generally apolitical.

Did you just change tempest in a teapot to tempest in a pint bottle because you're in the beer business, I thought that very clever, so I had to use a beer reference there.

I've always thought of in Hazard Bush as a decidedly sort of Midwestern middle America grit company and St. Louis, despite the criminal problems and the decay of the city generally, I've always thought that it was very perfect that it was St. Louis and the image of St. Louis.

The cardinals of football previously and baseball and this sort of image of St. Louis, the spirit of St. Louis.

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