Bud Light - Easy to Summer (2023) :60 (USA)

When Bud Light brought us "hold music" for the Superbowl, their new strategy was announced with fanfare, that it's the easy-going and easy-drinking beer - easy for everyone. “We are ushering in a new era for this brand,’ said Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, in an interview. She promised then to “strip away all the loudness and the distractions.”

This is not a bad strategy to take when other brands have owned the low-carb area for decades, and their biggest competition is less "easy" drinking heavier IPAs. Their follow-up ad "Carry" showed a woman at a bar managing to bring an armful of beers to her friends without spilling a drop, while shaming a tray-guy on the way.

Then Bud Light shat in the blue cabinet as they managed to offend everyone with a poorly thought-out Dylan Mulvany sponsorship that caused such an uproar and sale decline that Alissa Heinerscheid was put on leave.

It's in light of all that we see this new summer ad.

On the surface, it's just a funny series of vignettes of all things summer. Hot asphalt and bare feet, difficulty opening kegs, sunburns, hammock struggles, and windy picnics. But people are reading into all of this, seeing clumsy men, doofus dads, and incompetent idiots - taking it to mean "the people who still drink Bud Light are utter morons." To them, Bud Light is now easy to boycott, rather than easy to drink.

Client: Anheuser-Busch InBev
Ad agency: Anomaly