E-Malt.com News article: 2495

USA, Miami: Brewer Anheuser-Busch Inc., known for beer commercials chock full of sexual humor, said on April 15 it planned to tone down its raunchier advertising amid a high-profile outcry against indecency in the media. "We are taking a more cautious approach to our creative (advertising) ... to understand what the country is feeling right now," Anheuser-Busch President August Busch IV told ad agency executives at a conference in Miami. Anheuser-Busch ads scored high among viewers during this year's Super Bowl football championship game with such stunts as a crotch-biting dog and the flatulent horse, but media critics slammed both of those commercials as bad taste.

Busch said the maker of Budweiser had pulled a commercial that appeared during this year's Super Bowl in which a horse passes gas into the face of a young woman out on what was supposed to be a romantic date in a carriage ride. While the company had not scrapped other advertisements, it is working with its agencies to try to better define its brand of humor without crossing lines of accepted taste, he said.

"Something is happening in the mood of the country that all marketers need to mind," Busch told reporters at the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Management Conference. "People are choosing to draw hard boundaries of what's tasteful and distasteful. I think it's going to get even tighter as we head to November (U.S. elections)."

Commercials for Budweiser and Bud Light beers have long topped the popularity charts during annual Super Bowl telecasts, a prized forum for advertisers to showcase ads before the year's single largest television audience. But this year's Super Bowl commercials, which cost an average $2.3 million per 30 second spot to air, were also overshadowed by a public outcry over the game's half-time show when singer Janet Jackson's breast was exposed. The incident fueled U.S. regulatory efforts to raise fines against what they see as indecent material aired by broadcasters.

Advertising executives and marketing experts said that other clients were growing more wary of consumer backlash against ads that tread heavily on cultural norms to grab attention. "Budweiser belongs to beer drinkers and he's reflecting that," said Kevin Roberts, chief executive at the Saatchi & Saatchi agency, referring to Busch's remarks. "You have to look at the world as it is."

The indecency uproar could put new pressure on the advertising industry, already feeling heat from public activists who charge food commercials with promoting obesity and alcohol ads with aiming at adolescents under the legal drinking age.

Another company pulling back from a potentially risque vehicle is lingerie company Victoria's Secret. The unit of Limited Brands said it would not air its much-hyped fashion show this year. "We live in an age of extreme popular culture," said J. Walker Smith, president of marketing consultancy Yankelovich Partners. "Taking old ideas to new extremes is going to run its course. We're going to have to reinvent how we approach creativity."


16 April, 2004