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Bud Light continues to face backlash more than a month after its polarizing pact with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney prompted outrage from conservatives that an industry guru believes was one of the biggest social media misfires of all time.

The saga began when Mulvaney publicized that thebeer companysent packs of Bud Light featuring the influencers face as a way to celebrate a full year of "girlhood." Mulvaney said the cans were her "most prized possession" on Instagram with a post that featured "#budlightpartner."The backlash was swift and parent company Anheuser-Busch has been faced with plummeting sales as a result, losing some $5 billion in market value.

"In my career, and from what I've seen, this has by far been one of the most polarizing instances within the social media space," Viral Nation marketing strategist Emma Ferrara told Fox News Digital.

Ferrara believes Bud Light should have approached the attempt to reach the transgender community, or new customers of any kind, more strategically.

Bud Light continues to face backlash more than a month after its polarizing pact with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney prompted outrage. (Getty)

BUD LIGHT IN SERIOUS TROUBLE OF LOSING STATUS AS TOP-SELLING BEER IN US, INDUSTRY EXPERT WARNS

"When you're looking to connect with a new community, which I think is incredibly important, I think there is a right and wrong way to approach that. And it starts with understanding who your core audience is," she said. "It starts with also understanding who is your brand and what are your values and what's your purpose."

Ferrara feels Bud Light should have figured out how to connect its once-loyal consumer base with the community it was trying to reach, which the beer maker seemingly failed to do. Once-proud consumers across America were outraged that Bud Light celebrated a full year of "girlhood" with a transgendered person, which has emerged as one of the most polarizing issues in America.

Many have scolded Bud Light over the partnership, with everything from blue collar Americans boycotting the product to conservative rock star Kid Rock using severalBud Lightcases for target practice.

Ferrara thinks Bud Light would have been better off bringing in a "real, authentic and credible fan of Bud Light" within the transgender community if it wanted to reach that demographic, as Mulvaney didnt feel like an authentic consumer of the product.

"Brands need to be aware that the transgender community is not a monolith, and individuals within that community have, you know, many different experiences and perspectives and identities," Ferrara said. "That means brands need to conduct thorough research and gain a deep understanding of the nuances within that community. And as well, I think there should have been some steps to really understand their current community and how they feel around that topic."

BUD LIGHTS PACT WITH TRANS ACTIVIST DYLAN MULVANEY SPARKS OUTRAGE, PRAISE

Dylan Mulvaney models Maybelline Makeup products in TikTok video from March. (Screenshot/Oli Londons Twitter account)

The Bud Light situation has been at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist for over a month, and has been a fixture among conservative talking points in recent weeks.

"This very much ties back to the notion that not all publicity is good publicity," Ferrara said.

Things have gotten so ugly that Anheuser-BuschsCEO Michel Doukeris addressed the ordeal on an earnings call with investors on Thursday. He downplayed the brand's partnership, and insisted there is "misinformation" spreading on social media about the company's team-up with Mulvaney.

"We need to clarify the facts that this was one can, one influencer, one post and not a campaign," Doukeris said, noting that the company has provided "direct financial support" to the frontline workers impacted by the boycott, naming delivery drivers, sales representatives, wholesalers, bar owners and servers.

CEO DISTANCES ANHEUSER-BUSCH FROM BUD LIGHT DYLAN MULVANEY CONTROVERSY: 'NOT A FORMAL CAMPAIGN'

Ferrara thinks Doukeris comments missed the mark.

"I really am of the belief that there is no such thing as a small post, or one post, or diminishing the meaning behind that. I do believe that there was an effort to connect with the community and one that, I think, just came about in the wrong way because it was inauthentic, and it wasn't credible," she said.

"When we think about the social space and when we think about partnerships and when we think about diverse groups and creators, including those from the transgender community, I think it's really important for brands to take a step back to ensure that they're relevant, they're authentic and they're credible in regard to the brands need to really develop a thoughtful and nuanced strategy around this," Ferrara continued. "I think it's important that you have the right experts to help you navigate and understand what is the best way to meaningfully connect, and is it even the right community to connect to?"

During Thursdays call, Doukerissaid it was too early to tell how the boycott affected Bud Light sales but was bullish thatAnheuser-Busch will quickly recoverfrom any setback. He reminded investors that the company has navigated global challenges including temporary bans on beer sales in certain countries and shutdowns of bars and restaurants across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The backlash has also led Bud Light toshake up its marketing team.

FOX Business' Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

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Bud Light still facing outrage after one of 'most polarizing' social media gaffes ever, industry guru says - Fox News

Sociowash has secured the digital mandate for Anko India has recently launched in India. Sociowash won the account in a multi-agency pitch and would be responsible for marketing duties being executed from the Delhi office.

On securing the mandate, Raghav Bagai, co-founder, Sociowash, said, We look forward to providing Anko with complete solutions and creating on-the-fly content, designs, and creatives that resonate with their target audience. With our teams expertise, we will guide and create expected awareness about Anko India, which will help the brand. Being a well-known brand in Australia and standing for its on-trend designs, great quality, and affordable pricing will delight Indian consumers.

According to the mandate, the agency will handle the creative strategies, influencer marketing, media planning and execution, social media promotions, work on big-ticket campaign ideation, ORM etc. The agency will also work towards uplifting the brands position across social media platforms, along with managing analytics and reporting.

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Anko onboards Sociowash as its digital marketing agency - The Financial Express

The spring cohort of strategists concluded their projects with a two-day event, where each team presented their research and recommended business plans to their partnering organizations. Former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who joined UTSA in a non-faculty role in January, and local entrepreneur and philanthropist Harvey E. Najim, the centers namesake and primary donor, were also in attendance to support the students.

This program is so much bigger than just the projects, and we can see that these students are transforming from the first week to the last, said Erica Clark, associate director of the Najim Center. Students gain real-world work experience through these projects, but they also learn lessons in real time about conflict resolution, communication, empathy and how to effectively collaborate with diverse peers to succeed as a group. It's truly a holistic developmental experience, and seeing these students grow as individuals throughout these eight weeks is amazing.

The Najim Strategists worked with seven local organizations this semester. One partnering company was Eat Drink Local Texas, which showcases local eateries, bars and events happening in San Antonio and across the state. Students working with the company were tasked with expanding its audience and increasing its collaborations with local restaurants.

The strategist team proposed selling a marketing services package to target small businesses and food trucks. The package would include services like advertising and social media management.

This program really pushed me out of my own comfort zone. I was involved with a project based around marketing, and I never had any marketing experience in my life, said Pranav Pillai, a first-year student in University College who worked with Eat Drink Local Texas. At first, I didnt know how this would help me in my prospective career of data analytics, however I realized that the skills I learnedlike communication with executives and curating a well-presented ideawould be helpful in many corporate jobs including data analytics. Overall, it did teach me skills that I never knew I needed to learn.

Other area organizations that participated in the strategist program include:

The strategist team that worked with Community First Health Plans helped audit the insurance companys phone systems, informing an updated call flow and scripts that will improve the overall customer experience.

We had a great experience working with the Najim students. We were impressed with their professionalism, collaboration, varied perspectives and the fresh eyes they brought to our corporate challenges, which in itself was a big help, said Judy Razo, executive director of corporate communications and experience at Community First Health Plans. The Najim students presented real-world solutions to complex challenges. We were very happy working with them and look forward to applying again in the future.

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Growth in Najim Strategist program expands experiential learning ... - UTSA

Its not difficult to persuade people to visit the Douro Valleyan almost comically picturesque wine region in northern Portugal. But if youre a dog lover with an appetite for vintage Port, Quinta da Crtes Instagram may inspire you to book airfare immediately.

Amid photos of the cobblestoned wine cellar and gnarled grapevines of the Douro Valley-based winery are shots of the owners dogs, Boris, Vicky, Lori and Tinto Co. These faithful companion[s] are pictured roaming the grounds and gazing soulfully into the camera in front of trellised vineyards.

Theyre among a new breed of wine dogs whose responsibilities go beyond traditional farm duties and into the digital realm. Photos of pets are increasingly common on winery and wine shop social media feeds as ways to develop brand identity and build connections with far-flung audiences.

But as tempting as it may be to sniff at the artifice of platforms, like Instagram, few businesses can survive without a digital community. In the social media era, were all brands. Why shouldnt our dogs help us build them? Whether this strikes you as adorable, opportunistic or inevitable depends on your relationship to social media, and how these companies approach it.

But theres no denying the power of a post featuring a four-legged friend.

Dog posts tend to perform very well across Jordan [Winerys] social media channels, says Kendall Busby, the director of marketing and communications at Jordan Winery in Healdsburg, California. She notes that pup posts receive 3-4% more interactions per follower on social media compared to the industry average. The dog-focused content is also seen by followers about 1,000 more times than the average.

Metrics aside, dogs are an important part of the success of a winery and can even help carry out a winerys mission. Like Jordan Winery Owner, John Jordans, four-legged companion.

Johns black labrador retriever rescue dog, Halsey, joins us at the winery every morning and is a beloved member of our staff, says Busby. Jordan himself is an animal rights activist who has raised funds and awareness through dog-centric social media posts for groups like Canine Companions, an organization that matches service dogs with people who have disabilities, and Soi Dog Foundation, an animal rights group.

Dogs are similarly prominent at Troon Vineyards in Applegate Valley, Oregon. Beau and Belle are a brother-sister pair of Grand Pyrenees who guard the biodynamic winerys sheep and chickens, and periodically appear on its Instagram account.

It almost feels like cheating, says Craig Camp, Troons general manager, of Beau and Belles social media marketability. Theyre these giant, adorable white dogs, and people love them.

Still, Camp notes, the dogs are first and foremost working team members of the winery and crucial to Troons commitment to biodiversity. Our mission overall is to try to convince other people to farm this way, not just our 100 acres. If we really want to change agriculture, we have to get out there and tell that story, Camp says.

Storytelling is how many brands differentiate themselves, whether its via social media posts, the anecdotes sales representatives share with investors or an earnest mission statement in a company handbook. All of those messages can be thoughtfully or inauthentically crafted, and its up to the audience to decide whether to engage or unsubscribe. Dogs can help appeal to followers and tell these stories.

Along with doing vital work in the vineyards (both on and offline), dogs are also hard at work in wine shops.

Family is woven into the foundation of New Yorks Beaupierre Wine & Spirits, a boutique bottle shop that Yannick Benjamin and Heidi Turzyn opened in 2022.

Benjamin and Turzyns dog, Amelie, often accompanies them to the shop and appears on its social media channels. The posts that get the most views are of Amelieby far, Benjamin says, laughing.

It makes sense to him that Amelie is a fan favorite on and offline. I think people see it as a connection. People enjoy that theyre supporting a family-owned business and that its from someone who grew up in the neighborhood, Benjamin says.

Besides, for some people, the wine world can seem intimidatingly opaque. If you open your social media feed and see Amelie sitting in Benjamins lap on Beaupierres sales floor, or Boris the beagle searching for snacks in the Douro, it makes the entire endeavor more approachable.

Sometimes, having the dog in the shop helps break down barriers, says Vince Tillotson, the manager and buyer at Grapefruit Wines, a bottle shop in Hudson, New York. His dog, Augie, is often in the store with him and makes cameos on the shops Instagram feed.

Its not just a tech sheet as a caption. There are so many ways to have conversations about wine, Tillotson says.

The word authenticity is often overused in conversations about branding, but its why pictures of Amelie, Beau, Belle and all the other pups resonate with audiences. Sure, some of us mindlessly scroll our feeds and like pictures of cute animals. However, many social media users are savvier than cynics expect. They can tell the difference between a soulless algorithm grab versus posters who treat their communitiesincluding the four-legged memberswith respect.

More:
The Best Wine Influencers Are Paid in Treats - Wine Enthusiast Magazine Online

Background

The ASAs investigation relates to CAP Code rule 22.12, which states that, except for media targeted exclusively to the trade, marketing communications with the direct or indirect effect of promoting nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and their components which are not licensed as medicines are not permitted in online and some other forms of electronic media. The ad investigated promoted e-cigarettes and should not have appeared on a public TikTok account and in this case, the ASA has not assessed the content of the ad under any other CAP rules.

A TikTok post from the account @Panaxhe_ promoting Elf Bar, an electronic cigarette brand, posted on 18 May 2022, featured scenes of a young man going through his day, which included referring to and smoking Elf Bar vapes, showing the product, and stating some Elf Bar brand flavours such as "blueberry" and "kiwi passionfruit". He had written in a notebook Why I Love My ELF BAR Rechargeable Disposable Pods. On-screen text stated RICH FLAVOUR and Rechargeable pods save a lot of money with a heart eyes face emoji.

Text underneath the video stated Best vapes out there, dont let the fiends get to it @elfbar_official_global #ELFA #ElfaEcoChoice # SavingMoney #ad Paid partnership.

Imperial Tobacco challenged whether the post breached the Code by promoting unlicensed, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and their components on TikTok.

Green Fun Alliance Ltd t/a Elf Bar said they had contacted the content creator and TikTok and asked them to remove the post. They said they had found the video content was inappropriate, did not comply with the brands content guidelines, and they believed it did not comply with the Code. They said they monitored and reviewed video content about Elf Bar on online platforms to ensure it met guidelines and regulations.

Elf Bar said they would improve their internal review and monitoring mechanisms to ensure that all online content complied with regulatory requirements. Elf Bar said that as a result of the complaint, they had stopped TikTok content and communications marketing in the UK.

Elf Bar said they had conducted an investigation in-house and with their outsourced marketing operations to understand how the video came to be produced. They said that their outsourced marketing provider had released the video without conducting the necessary checks with Elf Bar. Elf Bar recognised that advertising and marketing content promoting their products produced by third parties was their responsibility. They would review and address their monitoring processes for future video content to ensure compliance with UK laws and regulations.

TikTok noted the video did not appear in paid-for ad space. But because it violated their branded content policy and community guidelines, it had been removed from their platform.

TikTok also said the mechanics of the platform was such that the content might have appeared on an algorithmically driven "For You" feed so that users who did not sign up to follow @Panaxhe_'s account may have seen it (but the content had now been removed). They said users posting on TikTok had the option to restrict content to be seen only by themselves, their "friends" (i.e., people who followed the user), or to "everyone", which would be seen by anyone on the platform (before it was removed).

Upheld

The ASA understood that Elf Bar outsourced their marketing to an external provider who created and distributed promotional marketing content on their behalf and sent gifts of free e-cigarettes to social media influencers. We considered that the gifting of free e-cigarettes constituted a payment to the individual featured in the post. Elf Bar also said the post had been released onto TikTok without the necessary checks being conducted by them. We considered that the existence of those checks demonstrated that they exercised a degree of editorial control over the posts content. Text below the video stated @elfbar_official_global #ad Paid partnership. We considered that the relationship between the parties, along with the references to #ad and paid partnership, established that the post was a marketing communication falling within the remit of the CAP Code.

CAP Code rule 22 .12 reflected a legislative ban contained in the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations (TRPR) on the advertising of unlicensed, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes in certain media. The rule stated that, except for media targeted exclusively to the trade, marketing communications with the direct or indirect effect of promoting nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and their components that were not licensed as medicines were not permitted in newspapers, magazines and periodicals, or in online media and some other forms of electronic media. It further stated that factual claims about products were permitted on marketers own websites and, in certain circumstances, in other non-paid-for space online under the marketers control.

The CAP guidance on Electronic cigarette advertising prohibitions (the Guidance) explained that the prohibition on ads in online media and some other forms of electronic media reflected the legal prohibition on ads in information society services. The Guidance indicated that ads placed in paid-for social media placements, advertisement features and contextually targeted branded content were likely to be prohibited.

We considered whether TikTok was an online media space where such advertising, using factual claims only, was permitted. We understood that, while promotional content was prohibited on retailers own websites, rule 22 .12 specified a particular exception that the provision of factual information was not prohibited. The basis of the exception to the rule was because consumers had to specifically seek out that factual information by visiting the website. The Guidance stated that, in principle, there was likely to be scope for the position relating to factual claims being acceptable on marketers websites, to apply to some social media activity. A social media page or account might be considered to be analogous to a website and able to make factual claims if it could only be found by those actively seeking it.

We understood that public posts could be seen by anyone who visited the TikTok website on a web browser and by any users of the app. It was possible for public posts from a TikTok account to be distributed beyond those users who had signed up to follow the account due to TikToks algorithms and account settings. We considered that was consistent with content being pushed to consumers without having opted-in to receive the message it contained and therefore it was not equivalent to actively seeking out information about e-cigarettes. Given that characteristic, we considered that material from a public TikTok account was not analogous to a retailers own website and that material posted from such an account was therefore subject to the prohibition on advertising of unlicensed, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes, meaning that neither promotional nor factual content was permitted.

We considered that advertising content from @Panaxhe_s TikTok account was similarly not analogous to a retailers own website and that material posted from that account was therefore subject to the prohibition on advertising of unlicensed, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes, meaning that the restriction that applied to online media under rule 22 .12 was applicable and neither promotional nor factual content was permitted.

We considered whether the ad directly or indirectly promoted a nicotine-containing e-cigarette. Unlicensed e-cigarettes were prominently featured throughout the ad. We considered that the ad was intended to have the appearance of a day in the life social media post and that it focused on featuring the man using and referring to e-cigarettes during the day. On-screen text stated rechargeable pods save a lot of money and rich flavour. We therefore considered that the ad contained promotional content for the product and consequently the restriction that applied to online media under rule 22 .12 was applicable.

Because the ad had the direct or indirect effect of promoting e-cigarettes which were not licensed as medicines in non-permitted media, we concluded that it breached the Code.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 22.12 (Electronic cigarettes).

The ad must not appear again in the form complained about. We told Green Fun Alliance Ltd t/a Elf Bar that marketing communications with the direct or indirect effect of promoting nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and their components which were not licensed as medicines should not be made from a public TikTok account.

22.12

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Green Fun Alliance Ltd - ASA | CAP - Advertising Standards Authority