We nearly injured ourselves rolling our eyes when we heard about this.
A Budweiser UK campaign celebrating Pride Month in London has majorly backfired. They’ve been accused of using lazy, old-fashioned sexism to appear woke. The beer company posted some pictures on Twitter of a marketing campaign they’re running in June, which features a series of brightly coloured cups. Each one is covered in stripes of different colours, all of which symbolise something to do with gender or sexuality.
Accompanied by the slogan “Fly the flag for gender fluid pride,” Budweiser UK posted a photo of a cup with pink, white, purple, black and blue stripes. “Pink is for femininity,” they explained. “Blue is for masculinity, while purple represents a mix of the two. Black represents lack of gender, and white stands for all genders.”
Twitter users were not amused. Almost immediately, people replied to the brand’s post, pointing out that stereotyping gender by colour is outdated and problematic.
“Your creative team needs modernising – 1950’s stereotyping ‘pink for girls’! Undergraduates understand contemporary culture, branding, audience – and use of yellow for gender neutral. Look it up – plenty research on this…” said Twitter user Katharine Reeve.
“Are you taking the piss? Pink for ‘femininity’? Have I suddenly woken up in 1950? Colours are just colours, anyone can like pink or blue or green. This is backwards,” said a Twitter user called Steph.
“Seriously guys !!! It’s 2019 ! Is your creative team from the 1930’s ??????? Absolute fail creatively tonally the writing everything !!!! Urgh !!!!!!” said exclamation mark fan Ru Ashworth. Someone known as Zeee simply added: “Green represents the money I’m gonna spend on other beers.”
Sonia Poulton pointed out on her Twitter that Budweiser’s interpretation of white and black wasn’t exactly ideal, either. “Also, Budweiser. Anyone who knows anything about racial semantics will also know that you have played into racist ideologies, too. Black: lack, less than. White: Saviour, all bountiful. I’m not sure you really thought about this campaign much at all.”
Someone called Nell said: “i cannot believe we have to rehash AGAIN that alcohol corporations pretending to be allies is literally NEVER A GOOD THING no matter how well they pretend.”
A lot of other people seemed to just be exasperated by this multi-million dollar company trying to align itself with the LGBTQI community for a specific event – and not even doing it sensitively. This is just one enormous company trying to get in on the Pride action (to sell beer??), without really providing any material support to the members of that community at any other time. There will be others. It seems a little hollow and opportunistic, to release a coloured cup during a month when millions of people round the world will fight for their right to equality, safety and love.
There was a tiny cluster of people online who said they felt “seen” or represented by the cups.
All in all, though, a pretty major fail. Maybe they should’ve just stuck to selling beer…
GLAMOUR has contacted Budweiser for comment.
