Stinkability

Yes, my friends, sometimes even bloggers are right.

About a year and a half ago, the brilliant editorial staff here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters commented on Bud Light's "Drinkability" campaign:

Their "Drinkability" campaign is awful. This is what happens when you let researchers into creative meetings.

"Drinkability" is not a word that an actual human being would use. Only an MBA would speak it. If this is representative of what the InBev boys are going to be doing, Budweiser is in deep dark shit.

Well, it's 18 months later and "Drinkability" has proven to be a total disaster. In an article entitled Bud's Biggest Blunder: Letting Consultants Run Away With Brand, Ad Age this week calls it the "Drinkability" debacle and says...

...four years and millions in fees later -- (Drinkabiltiy) is considered a major factor in Bud Light posting the first full-year sales decline in its history...

Just as we expected, "Drinkability" was the handiwork of MBA research knuckleheads who know everything about marketing double-talk and nothing about human beings...

Cambridge's exhaustive findings led directly to dramatic shifts in how Budweiser and Bud Light were marketed. Each brand largely abandoned the emotional appeals that had helped them become the two largest beer brands in the U.S. for straightforward pitches about process and product attributes that coincided with worsening sales for both labels...In 2009, its shipments fell 2.5%, the first-ever negative sales year for the country's No. 1 beer.

As advertising migrates farther from the creative department, into the hands of consultants, MBAs, planners, researchers, strategists, data analysts, and other tone-deaf jargon jockeys, it will continue its slide into awfulness and irrelevance.

You can line up all your researchers, analysts, and data geniuses. Give me one great creative person and I'll give you a better ad strategy every time.