Despite taking a machine gun to cases of Bud Light, Kid Rock should be the beer brand's next spokesperson, according to a group of comedians on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Anheuser-Busch's beer brand is facing a number of boycotts for its brief collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Sales have fallen, videos of Bud Light sitting on store shelves have gone viral, and notable figures have spoken out against the brand.
One of them was musician Kid Rock, who posted a violent video of him using a machine gun to repeatedly shoots cases of Bud Light before flipping off the brand and its parent company.
Two months later and there's still a section of beer drinkers boycotting Bud Light. There are many examples available online, via viral videos, of people avoiding the brand.
Now, Joe Rogan and some of his friends have come up with a solution for Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Rogan welcomed comedians Shane Gillis, Mark Normand and Ari Shaffir onto episode 1991 of his podcast. In the 2 hours, 30 minutes of discussion, the Bud Light controversy was brought up on a number of occasions, especially because they were drinking it in the studio.
"They should hire kid Rock to be the spokesman," Rogan said.
"We talked about it last night, that would be the best," Gillis said.
Weighing in, Shaffir offered his take for how a Kind Rock and Bud Light collaboration should go: "30 second Kid Rock commercial, let him go...nuts. One second before it ends Shane [Gillis] comes in and goes, 'and me.'"
Gillis said on the podcast that he helps sell "a thousand Bud Lights every weekend" because of his stand-up shows.
"The fact that you don't give a...and keep drinking Bud Light despite the controversy, you're not going to bow," he said. "That's what you enjoy. I mean come on man, we're all talking s*** on phones that are made by [sweatshops]. It's all nonsense.
The latest figures show that Bud Light sales dropped 29.5 percent in the week ending May 20, according to data provided to Newsweek by Bump Williams Consulting and Nielsen IQ. That week was more than a month and a half since Mulvaney announced her brief partnership with the beer.
Early in the podcast, Rogan and Gillis alluded to a plan they'd devised that would send Bud Light stocks "through the roof" but at the same time divide America even further and "start a war." They didn't explain what that plan was so as not to get in trouble, but Rogan suggested using the internet meme character Pepe the Frog holding a Bud Light saying "Feels bad man."
Continuing to speculate on how Bud Light could get itself out of the hole, Rogan suggested it could "go full heel" like a bad guy in wrestling.
A week after distancing himself from Bud Light with his viral video, Kid Rock then promoted Happy Dad seltzer by holding a can aloft on his Instagram account.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Jamie Burton is a Newsweek Senior TV and Film Reporter (Interviews) based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on ... Read more
