Garth Brooks could learn how customers can show him how the thunder rolls when he opens his new bar. If the profits never come, it could be due to him choosing to serve the wrong long-neck bottle.
It has been amazing to watch as the gentry of this country is beginning to show the heft of its will against the perpetual hectoring and lecturing on social issues from the press and the corporate overlords. It would be natural to think we are on a hopeless slide into woke theology based on the waves of supposed influence we are inundated with daily, but we are starting to see there is ground being held. It is not an inevitable transformation after all.
Conservative leaders are getting anti-woke policies installed. School boards are being fought against installing improper content in schools. In yesterday's media column, I showed a Gallup poll revealing people across demographics are growing more opposed to males competing in female sports. And the consumer pushback against companies shoving the LGBT𝜋 agenda has been a revelation. Just look at how many fewer companies went the rainbow logo route this month for Pride celebrations.
Bud Light, in particular, displays a surprising result, as the customer base has shown impressive resiliency in its boycott, sending the longtime #1 selling beer plunging from the top position in this country. Yet, despite these blatant examples of a minefield existing that is smart to be avoided, not all have learned the lesson it seems.
Garth Brooks gave an interview with Billboard Country Live, revealing his position on the beer controversy, showing a willingness to pogo-stick into that minefield that Anheuser-Busch now laments having rushed into in April. Brooks has a bar opening up in a few months on Nashville's famed South Broadway District called "Friends In Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk," and he decided to comment on the recent beer froth. He... gives a bit of a disconnect in his thinking:
I want it to be a place you feel safe in, I want it to be a place where you feel like there are manners and people like one another. And yes, we’re going to serve every brand of beer. We just are. It’s not our decision to make. Our thing is this, if you [are let] into this house, love one another. If you’re an a–hole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway.
Call me a neophyte in customer relations, but I am confused about how you claim to be a purveyor of manners WHILE vulgarly referring to potential customers.
This was seen in the A-B beer brouhaha. What Bud Light is enduring is only partially due to the avowed support of Dylan Mulvaney. Another component of the issue was the brand's vice president seen in an interview describing Bud Light drinkers as "fratty and out of touch." Insulting your own customers is about as backward as the thinking on marketing can get. Now, Garth is calling a core of his potential patrons "a**holes" for avoiding Bud Light. Why fall into this same trap that saw A-B's executive sent out of the corporate suites?!
By comparison, look at another country singer, John Rich. He already has a bar on that Nashville venue, "The Redneck Riviera," and he spoke with Tucker Carlson (back when he had a show – ahem) about his reaction to the uproar with the beer brand. He wasn't banning the brand from his establishment and also was not denigrating the brand. He stated flatly that his customers went from making it the top seller to having stopped drinking the beer in his bar.
Rich saw Garth's comments about Bud Light and displayed that same even-handed approach, dealing in the reality of the situation:
I think he probably sees the pain and division that's going on in the country and wants to try to help that. If I know Garth at all, and I know him a little, that's probably the impetus behind a statement like that. So, good for him. I wish him the best. If Garth is serving Bud Light in his bar, that's fine. Garth can do that. Garth might find out not many people are going to order it. And at the end of the day, you have to put things in your establishment that people are going to purchase if you're going to run a successful business. So, he might find that out.
Following his initial comments on the issue, Brooks seems to be trying to strike the proper balance. In a follow-up appearance on his streaming cast, "Inside Studio G," Brooks addressed the comments and the reactions to them:
'Let’s … address two things on it. One is diversity. Inclusiveness: That’s me. That’s always been me. Everybody’s got their opinions,' he added during the livestream. 'But inclusiveness is always going to be me. I think diversity is the answer to the problems that are here and the problems that are coming. So I love diversity. All-inclusive, so all are welcome.'
Brooks fell prey to something seen frequently in the entertainment realm, but also in our culture. Many times you see these proclamations of acceptance and inclusiveness, and they are then followed by declarations of how those with a differing opinion need to be sent away. They refuse to see the paradox created for themselves. Here is Garth saying, "All-inclusive, all are welcome," right on the heels of calling a segment "a-holes" and they should be sent packing down Nashville's sidewalks.
He does, however, seem to start grasping the same equitable approach John Rich spoke of, where the marketplace should be left to decide. Instead of lambasting the drinkers for not ordering correctly, offer them choices, let them make the selections, and stop lecturing people about what proper consumer decisions should be:
It’s the patrons’ call — the bosses, right? Bring ’em in there. If they don’t want it, then I got to go to the distributor and say, ‘Man, your stuff’s not selling.’ And then action gets taken. But the truth is, it’s those people in those seats that make those decisions, and that’s what Friends in Low Places is going to be.
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