Budweiser's Stupid Copywriting

The other day, in a moment of despondency about my unending unemployment, I tried to cheer myself up by buying a bottle of Bud. It didn’t work. I became marginally less happy when I realised that I don’t like the taste of light, fizzy lager; but my mood went disastrously downhill when I read the rubbish they’ve scrawled on their bottle. Lots of beers claim absurd things for themselves, but Budweiser trumps the lot.

The label begins, This is the famous Budweiser beer. This is an unremarkable start, if a little smug. The next sentence seems to completely undercut it. We know of no brand, it tells us, produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. What exactly are Budweiser boasting about? I think there are two options, each as unimpressive as the other.

They could be bragging that their manufacturing processes are not just slow and expensive, but the very slowest and most expensive in the whole world. A few reflections on this: first, their margins must be terrible; second, their management must be terrible; third, they’re spending a lot of money, and they’re coming up with Bud.

Perhaps, then, we could read them more charitably: when they say they know of no other brand whose production is even less efficient than theirs, we should infer that they literally know of no other brands. Their production costs might actually be pretty cheap, but they can accurately claim to know of no other brand that’s more expensive because they know of no other brand. But knowing nothing about your industry (or the universe at large) doesn’t seem a very spectacular claim either.

So Budweiser is either telling us that they’re desperately inefficient, or knowingly ignorant. Why they want to advertise such things is beyond me.

The next sentence of promotional material doesn’t improve matters: Our exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste, a smoothness, and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price. On face value, this seems to hold a lesson for patronising, capitalist pigs like me who scoff at inefficiency and ignorance, but who don’t understand that true craftsmanship is invaluable. If Bud really is spending more on their beer than anyone else ever, it’s because they’re artists. Maybe my mechanistic mind can’t comprehend the pricelessness of Beechwood Aging and the internationally-recognised categories of taste, smoothness and drinkability.

Or maybe their craftsmanship isn’t so special. Bud’s taste is a matter of taste: like every drink, some people like it, many others don’t, and the people hawking it claim it’s ambrosia. Bud isn’t smooth: unlike, say, Guinness, it’s exploding with the prickliness of trapped CO2. And Bud is exactly as drinkable as every other liquid, including sulphuric acid. In other words, their exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste and a drinkability that people already find everywhere else, and a smoothness you won’t find actually find in Bud at all.

Here’s the label is really saying:

This is the famous Budweiser beer. We either produce it inefficiently, or maybe we don’t know anything. Our unique Beechwood Aging produces three attributes: one subjective, one imaginary, and one common to every beer at any price.