Okay, so here's a new ad just out for the summer season. Palm trees, a beachy setting featuring swimwear-clad partiers, every one of them holding a beer in a clear bottle, all delivered with relaxing, easy-vibe music track. The only spoken words are one man's possibly alcohol-induced, non-sequitur musing: "If palm trees could talk, I'd bet they would speak Spanish. Man, I wish I spoke Spanish."

You might well ask: What does Bud Light Lime have to do with palm trees and speaking Spanish? Pretty much, nothing. Those solid brand- equity components belong to the Corona brand. It's growing 10%+ per year while the entire Bud Light franchise--with and without
​limes--continues to lose volume.

For reference, here's a Corona ad continuing to leverage its relaxation vibe, beachy history, and legitimate imported-from-a-Spanish-speaking-country product distinctiveness. All this continues the advertising mega-investment by the Mexican import over a couple of decades now.

la envidia del pene comercialización

Since speaking Spanish seems to be on the mind of the Bud Light Lime marketing brain trust, they'll certainly be able to translate our headline up above. For the rest of us, it means "A case of marketing penis envy."

You can almost hear the Bud Light people reasoning that Corona is on fire because of its clear-bottle/Mexican source/beach-vibe heritage... and of course, the lime. So... here's their cleverness: We'll just steal all that in our ads, and appropriate it for BudLight Lime! (Self-delusion can be strong in young brand managers.) Alas, in marketing, imitation of a more successful brand by a far less successful brand isn't flattery, it's foolishness. Beer drinkers who see this latest Bud Light ad can't help but be reminded of Corona. Running ads that sell a competitor's brand takes foolishness to the level of insanity.

Back to the two ads. The end frame of one of them is shown here...

At least, we think it is.

This week Bud Light unveiled a new ad in their otherwise unremarkable Bud Light Party effort, an ad campaign that has yet to produce a sales turnaround for the declining brand. Here's how Bud Light's website described why their marketing people created a broadcast television ad celebrating gay weddings...

"June is THE height of wedding season. It’s also LGBT Pride month, and we’ve been a supporter of the LGBT community for more than 20 years. That’s why Bud Light believes we should celebrate every kind of wedding – and everyone’s right to marry whoever they choose. No matter who’s on the cake, the #BudLightParty toasts the happy couple."

So, what about the risk?

What was missing in the general-media's extensive coverage of the new ad was one word: risk. Assessing risk to their brands is a critical responsibility for marketing people. While it's absolutely true that support for gay marriage is above 55% in the country, with over 70% of the millennial group approving, there are two risky unknowns for Bud Light. First, how many of the brand's best consumers lie in the remaining 45% and 30% respectively? And second, will their purchase behavior change as a result of their beer brand's broadcast embrace of gay marriage?

Beer-industry publications were a bit more forthcoming about the risk. Beer Marketers Insights mentioned "lots more leeriness from distributors" about the ad. They also noted:

"So as (Bud Light) goes public with that support (for gay marriage)... it could be news to folks that largely don’t interact with this community and may have a different response." 

Put more directly, to the argument in the ad that "Gay weddings are just like any other wedding," some unknown--and unknowable--number of loyal Bud Light drinkers in the general audience might well respond, "The hell they are." (This is most likely the "different response" Beer Marketers Insights so delicately referenced.) If this causes any significant number of loyal Bud Light drinkers to switch brands, the risk to an already troubled brand could be substantial.

​The Bud Light marketing people are flying blind here. Hoping their new ad will grow business, they simply have no idea of the magnitude of the opposite result. Research is no help, either. Pro or con, many people avoid candidly answering questions of a sexual-preference-related nature in studies (if indeed such research was even attempted in this case). But the Bud Light distributors have a very keen gut sense for their markets. They know risk when they feel it. Ignoring their "leeriness" could well be a serious mistake.

Tightly targeting specific consumers is nothing new for beer

While Bud Light pats itself on the back about its history of supporting the LGBT community over the years, the fact is, every major beer brand has done the same thing, for about the same amount of time. Gay-themed messaging has been just one of the many tactics in the beer marketers' play books to build loyalty to their brands among this large, important target. The major brands have been heavy users of gay media, and also major sponsors of hundreds of gay events. By design, most of these efforts went unseen by the general-market audience.

In much the same way, beer brands have also courted gun-loving sportsmen and hunters. And for the same business reason: They are big beer drinkers. But since firearms and dead animals are anathema to many urban beer drinkers, beer marketers kept their "sportsmen efforts" tightly targeted in enthusiast magazines and on-premise signs and promotions.

​Why mention big-game hunting and gay weddings together? Imagine the response if a leading beer brand broadcast a hunting-themed, openly gun-centric ad to the much larger general audience. How many city-dwelling PETA sympathizers or gun-control advocates would continue buying the brand in response to its supporting this constitutionally protected legal pastime? The point: Taking a tightly targeted message featuring issues on which people have passionate opinions, to the largest possible audience can have real risk.

Uncharted territory

Boldly, foolishly--or both--Bud Light's gay-marriage ad enters this uncharted territory. It represents the first time a beer brand has made a gay-themed appeal, and weighed in on one side of a polarizing issue debate, and done so in broadcast media designed for general-market consumption. ​It's historic, and historically risky.

Old seafarers' maps identified uncharted areas featuring hidden reefs and unknown weather with a notation warning: "Here be dragons."

​Which would make anyone a bit leery.