Linking Archives - Desert Kite

Bud Light is in a tailspin. You may have heard the news.

On April 1, transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney announced that Bud Light had sent her personalized cans to celebrate her one-year anniversary living as a trans woman.

A boycott of Bud Light started as a result. In the weeks and months since, sales of Bud Light have plummeted close to 30%. The stock price of Anheuser-Busch is down by almost 20% compared to April 1. This fiasco has erased over $22 billion worth of market value.

Brand boycotts normally blow over in a couple weeks. The Bud Light boycott is getting stronger after 3 months. Sales of Bud Light are trending lower and lower each week. Data out In June showed Mexican lager Modelo replacing Bud Light as America’s best-selling beer.

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a peacemaking statement, saying the company never meant to be “part of a discussion that divides people.”

Bud Light continues to sponsor Major League Baseball and has a new summer campaign, “easy to drink and easy to enjoy.”

None of this is making an impact.

At this point, I’d like to step in. Anheuser-Busch is an American institution, as is Bud Light. Also, some 18,000 people’s jobs are directly on the line.

At the same time, it’s clear that this is not an issue of beer or jobs only, but really about values and identity.

Where Brendan Whitworth and the billion-dollar marketing agencies that Anheuser-Busch employs have failed, I will succeed.

Using the almost mystical influence powers I have gained through repeated use of my Most Valuable Email Trick trick, I will realign Bud Light’s public positioning so it once again fits its core market’s values and identity. At the same time, I will do so in a way that leaves the progressive community impressed and content.

If I were to start now, I could have Bud Light back on top, ahead of Modelo, getting more Americans slightly buzzed without feeling bloated, well before Labor Day. All Anheuser-Busch has to do is get Whitworth to write me and ask. My email address is publicly available.

In other news, I have a disappearing bonus for you for today.

This morning I came across an incredible resources, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice.

It comes from a man I’ve actually written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

Among a dozen or more great ideas in that resource I found today, one stood out to me.

So here are the details of my disappearing bonus offer:

1. Get a copy of my Most Valuable Email training at https://bejakovic.com/mve/

2. Then reply to this email and say you want the disappearing bonus offer.

3. I will write you back and tell you 1) That resource I found this morning, and where you can get it for free 2) the particular idea that struck me, and how you can apply it in your own marketing and 3) why the man behind this resource has been so influential to me personally.

4. This disappearing bonus offer is good until tomorrow, Tuesday July 11, at 8:31pm CET.

5. And of course, if you’ve bought MVE already, this is open to you as well. Write in and ask away, and I will tell you. But the same deadline applies.

Last Wednesday, a troop of scientist monkeys was circling in a helicopter above the Utah desert, when they spotted something that shouldn’t be there.

The scientists landed to take a closer look.

There, in the middle of Road Runner country, among red cliffs and tumbleweeds and a whole lot of nothing, stood a rectangular silver pillar. It was about 10 feet tall, and about 1 foot in width and depth.

The mysterious object had no apparent purpose or function. There was no clue who or what had created it.

So in an instinctive show of excitement, the scientists started hooting and throwing sticks and scratching their armpits.

But let me take a step back. I found out about this from a BBC article titled:

“Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert”

I clicked on this article among dozens of other tempting news headlines. So I asked myself why. The news aspect was one, the curiosity another. But that’s clearly not all.

It’s that word “monolith.” Maybe you see where this is going.

A monolith in the middle of the desert ties into Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001. You know the famous scene, with the orgasmic music and the sun rising as a monkey smashes some tapir bones.

I thought this monolith article was speaking directly to me. But sadly no. The BBC knew what it was doing.

Millions of other people made the same 2001 connection. One twitter intellectual writing under the account @MonolithUtah commented “We come in peace.” Another wrote “2020 isn’t done with us yet #utahmonolith.”

This has obvious applications if you’re writing sales copy. In fact, marketer Joe Sugarman exploited the underlying principle behind this monolith story to sell all kinds of devices, from smoke detectors to remote car starters.

That’s something I wrote about in more detail when I originally wrote this article and sent it out to my newsletter subscribers.

In case you’d like to be on my newsletter, so you don’t miss any more copywriting tricks that link into popular science fiction movies, click here and subscribe.