PicoBlog

Alissa Heinerscheid, the Bud Light lady, lost her job. Or, in corporate euphemistic terms: she’s on a “leave of absence.” Heinerscheid is being replaced by the vice president of global marketing for Budweiser, Todd Allen, according to Ad Age.

In a somewhat cryptic statement from the brand, it was implied that Heinerscheid was removed from her post because it was unsafe to let her continue. An unnamed spokesperson for the company said: “First, we made it clear that the safety and welfare of our employees and our partners is our top priority.”

From all I can glean, the suggestion is that she received threats from anti-trans bigots therefore needed to be removed for her own safety. I think.

As expected, some are cheering this as a victory — a repudiation of woke capitalism.

Others are handwringing this decision as a triumph for all the “hateful bigots.”

And decrying the harassment which, yes, Heinerscheid was likely the victim of — which is clearly unacceptable.

I do wonder if these same “progressive” folks had anything to say about the harassment and hate I received including calls to #boycottlevis and have me ousted from my job. I got scores of DMs like this:

And, of course, there were torrents of implicit calls to fire me. Like this:

It is important to note, that the harassment I received was not for doing my job poorly but for the crime of citing that prolonged public school closures were going to be harmful to a generation of children They were.

In fact, the Levi Strauss and Company stock price during my tenure as Brand President (I took over as Brand President in October 2020) was at an all time high of $29.33 (in May 2021). It is now under $15.

As a former corporate executive and brand leader, I’ll offer my perspective on the “leave of absence” of Heinerscheid.

The first rule of marketing is KNOW YOUR CONSUMER. Implicit in that tenet — respect them. Heinerscheid’s real misstep was in dismissing and insulting the current Bud Light consumers as “fratty” and “out of touch.”

Does respecting the consumer mean indulging any negative qualities they may possess? No. (And I’m not arguing here whether or not the Bud Light consumer possesses negative qualities — though they are human, after all. I’m just reflecting on all of the current commentary assuming that they are unrepentant, evil bigots.) Does it mean seeking to understand their lives, who they are, and why they choose your product? Yes. And reflecting that in the most aspirational, unifying light possible in order to attract more consumers like them. Yes.

In the early 2010s, I led marketing for the Dockers brand. It had suffered a steep decline for over a decade, after having quite a run as the Gen X choice for the workplace, ushering in Casual Fridays and a more relaxed and individualistic way of coming to the office. These guys tossed the uncomfortable, conformist suit aside — the required uniform for their fathers — in favor of khakis and polo shirts. At the time — and I know it’s hard to fathom — this was pretty radical.

Over time, with product innovations such as stain-resistance and “Never Iron”, the brand presented itself as the choice for schlubby guys who spill on themselves all the time and choose to wear pants that had been heaped on the floor in the corner before being pulled on for another boring day at the office. (For the Yiddish impaired, a schlub is a “a talentless, unattractive or boorish person.”)

In short, throughout the 2000s, we at Dockers presented the brand as the solution for cubicle-dwelling, unambitious losers everywhere. Are you a schlub? Dockers is for you! You can not care and be somewhat presentable anyway! Do as little as possible in how you present yourself and how you do your job. Dilberts of the world — unite! (I realize the irony of using a Dilbert analogy here given the recent dust-up with Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams. But I think you all get my point.)

My view: insulting the loyal fans of the Dockers brand, over time, had turned them away, and failed to attract new younger guys. It was necessary to assert the positive rather than get cheap laughs for the negatives, in order to turn the brand’s business around.

I’m not presenting my approach here as the end-all-be-all solution. The brand continued to struggle with declining sales for some time. But I made it my business to know and understand those who continued to buy Dockers. I came to respect them as honest and hard-working guys who took their responsibilities to their families and community seriously. The Dockers wearer was, and is, admirable. This was a good starting point to create content — and pants — that made him proud to don the brand.

When I took over at Levi’s as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), we had a problem not dissimilar to what I imagine Bud Light faces. We had aged as a brand, as our core consumer had. We had failed to bring younger users — who tend to buy more clothes — into the brand’s fold. The remit was not to leave the older fans behind, rather lean into what had made the brand great — the best jeans in the world for those who want to express their individuality in how they dress — and modernize it for a younger consumer. Without alienating those who still loved it and wore it, even if they had committed the horrible sin of aging. The goal: reinforce for loyal fans why they chose Levi’s in the first place — as a manifestation of authentic self-expression. And use that to grow the consumer base and, ultimately, sales.

And so, to my mind, the reason Heinerscheid proved she wasn’t up to the challenge of the job is that she seemed to really dislike the Bud Light consumer and be willing to cast him aside by insulting him — sales be damned. And she publicly and proudly expressed her dislike in a podcast just days before the ill-fated promotion with trans-influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

The podcast appearance would have gone unnoticed if the selection of Mulvaney hadn’t gone viral in all the wrong ways. But it shouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the powers that be at Bud Light. Because, in and of itself, this attitude is disrespectful to fans of the brand and a recipe for marketing that leaves them feeling dismissed. And exits loyal users without replacing them instantaneously, resulting in inevitable sales declines. This, to my mind, is what made her unqualified for the job.

Side note: there are those who believe that upper management — more “upper” than Heinerscheid — knew about the Mulvaney collaboration and were fine with it. Until they weren’t. I’d guess that’s not true. As the VP of Marketing I’m fairly certain she was imbued with the authority to make these decisions without approval from the muckety-mucks. At Levi’s we hired hundreds of influencers around the world and I often didn’t know about them. I gave my team the authority to do their jobs, with clear guidelines around who would best represent the brand. If I had insisted on approving every influencer, I would have been a roadblock, slowing things down to the point of the organization becoming utterly dysfunctional in its slowness.

Now . . . did the big bosses give Heinerscheid permission to “go for it” — be bold, break the mold, “reinvent” the brand! Probably. Did she go about that in a misguided fashion? I’d argue, yes.

And so, there is a part of me that feels quite bad for Heinerscheid. Anheuser-Busch explicitly chased ESG and CEI and the rest of the “equality” and social justice ratings, giving Heinerscheid the implicit approval to move full-speed ahead with polarizing marketing that divides rather than unites, and even worse, doesn’t focus on product. And then, they threw her under the bus as a rogue employee, pretending they had nothing to do with it.

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