1y ago Conspiracy

@Antelope I suspect the reason people didn't blowback against the Miller ad was because it featured a typical woke screed that customers are used to ignoring and they just either didn't see the ad or stomached it

Whereas Mulvaney is a deeply hateable man with an extremely in your face over the top personality that is identifying as a little girl. Yes, a young girl, not a woman, the man identifies as a female child.

That and before the bud light fiasco, he was getting endorsed by many other brands for being a psycho and was already on the radar for it. Dylan also has a titok where people can regular realize how much they hate him by seeing him constantly pumping out content that makes people hate him.

So when he shows a can with his trans child-identifying face on it for the world to see on an iconic mostly men brand, everyone who already had opposition to him (political commentators etc) already had the infrastructure, reach, and online platform in place to make an extremely damaging boycott campaign.

That's why, an isolated feminist screed had nothing on the mass opposition that was already in place for Mulvaney and then he decided to flaunt his special treatment by a company beloved by many right-leaning male customers

1y ago Conspiracy

@MentORPHEUS its because of ESG ratings. Corporate investors that control mega-billions in the form of retirement accounts (Blackrock, Vanguard, and others) have made ESG ratings an important factor when they decide where to invest. This means that companies which don't toe the line get a bad score, and then lose out on billions in investment.

Disney is in the same boat. They went balls deep with the M-She-U crap, and they can't back out now even as they lose hundreds of millions in stock value and poor returns on their films because to change course would be a repudiation of ESG, which would further tank whatever is left of their stock when the Blackrocks and Vanguards of the world pull out.

To summarize, these companies are beholden to a new market - and its not a consumer market. Its the stock market, specifically its the big retirement players in the stock market.

1y ago Conspiracy

@MentORPHEUS Also of note is the advert was uploaded 2 months ago, which tells me the blowback has been minimal to non-existent.

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Antelope

1y ago Conspiracy

@MentORPHEUS I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed the ecological aspect of the advert in focus groups. Women + eco friendly = win.

This isn’t the same as the Bud light advert in that it has an ‘interesting’ hook in interacting with the company by sending them old material to compost, giving the audience a chance to virtue signal, and how people love to do just that!

MentORPHEUS

1y ago Conspiracy

@adam-l

There's a mass psychosis going on, literally.

Not sure I accept that in the case of Miller. Unlike the Bud can that did an end run around traditional marketing machinery and its checks and balances, the Miller commercial had to have gone through the massive and well oiled marketing department. They normally focus group and test market the hell out of new campaigns before release, and will revamp or scrap a poorly performing commercial. These departments know better than to focus test on a small biased group only, like current college kids who it looks like were the ONLY input and feedback on this through the whole production process.

Ennui or another, investors are going to see a LOT of their money burned in what is to follow this asinine commercial.

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adam-l

1y ago Conspiracy

@MentORPHEUS

It's kindof like their enthusiasm when the First World War broke out and they were called to fight.

adam-l

1y ago Conspiracy

@MentORPHEUS Again, you are thinking oof companies as entirely rational.

There's a mass psychosis going on, literally. Psychos enjoy it because it makes them feel normal, and normie upper-middle classers are swept off their feet by this exquisite opportunity to throw away money to escape their ennui for a change.

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MentORPHEUS

1y ago Conspiracy

Trying to make sense of the Bud Light and Miller Lite blunders. Big companies like this focus group test ad campaigns before putting them out in the open, so there is no way they didn't know how this would play, moreso with the Miller ad which is more traditional than the social media nature of Bud Light and Mulvaney.

Anyway, I can't see ANY way this could be turned into a backend profit greater than the value of preserving the brand, even short selling large amounts of stock.

My conspiracy thought is maybe they realize SUCH a deep and long economic crash is coming that leisure sectors like beer will get priced out of a starving and desperate population's reach. Maybe this is a deliberate "Enjoy the decline!" game the beer companies are playing with their brands.

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destraht

1y ago Conspiracy

@MentORPHEUS

A good point, and I was surprised to learn how much LNG we've been exporting in recent years. Probably intertwined with the Ukraine situation.

Perhaps you would have had better retention at the time had I not been calling you horrible insults and in general just denigrating your entire being.

MentORPHEUS

1y ago Conspiracy

@Whisper

the US has been a net exporter of petroleum for several years now,

A good point, and I was surprised to learn how much LNG we've been exporting in recent years. Probably intertwined with the Ukraine situation.

This can get complicated, because petroleum imports and exports include not just crude oil but a lot of its distillates.

It gets even more complicated when taking the production break-even point by source.

most people vastly underestimate the impact of fracking on the industry.

It's huge, but not a simple barrel for barrel replacement. Fracked oil has the second highest break even cost per bbl. The highest, tar sand oil, requires as many BTUs get expended in production as get produced as shipping product, which is one of the concerns environmentalists raise about it. The break-even cost currently runs about 2.5X that of the least expensive, onshore middle east produced oil. It's good we're way off our peak imports from the OPECkers, but this explains why consumers are getting screwed at the pump and at the retail price of everything using petroleum in production despite North American production reaching incredible peaks.

I'm neither an oil industry analyst or professional economist, but taking even the remaining few million bbl/day of light sweet crude from places like the ME and Venezuela beyond economic or trade status reach when the petrodollar system crumbles can't get simply replaced by ramping up fracking and tar sands production, as refineries are purpose-built for their intended feedstock. Thus, prices at the pump would explode out of proportion to the percentage of our daily oil consumption from these imports should they get disrupted.

All that notwithstanding, the economics of replacing diesel OTR trucks with electric doesn't make sense. Even with lithium technology, the weight and energy density of the necessary battery packs doesn't hold a candle to that of a pair of saddle tanks filled with diesel at today's prices. Thus the conspiracy spitballed in my OP that I haven't heard elsewhere, attempting to explain the otherwise unexplainable rather than presenting a desired or currently workable plan.