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CHAPTER 6 / MUST YOU INVENT? A POX ON CREATIVITY86 NO B.S. Guide to Succeeding in Business by Breaking All the Rulestogether and told them the company had to %u201cget with it,%u201d get a new, more modern image. After over a million dollars invested in this creative exercise, the old logo was jettisoned and a new logo was introduced. The old one, by the way, clearly identified the company%u2019s product. The new one showed only the corporate name in a very fashionable, difficult-to-read type style. Logos were torn down and replaced on hundreds of stores nationwide; catalogs, brochures, and other literature and websites were transformed, and the company launched an advertising campaign doing nothing but advertising the new corporate logo.The public reacted, well, by at first not reacting at all. It was a %u201cwho cares?%u201d for the consumer. Then, as enough time passed to measure change in market share, the new logo proved to be hurting rather than helping sales. After a number of months, the company%u2019s wizards gave in and redesigned the new logo to incorporate the old logo. And that halfbreed logo has %u201cstuck%u201d for the last 20 years.A giant, costly, creative exercise launched by whim, rejected by the public.At the time I was writing this, a new, young, very creative marketing executive decided that Bud%u00ae and Bud Light%u00ae were stuck in misogynistic, toxic male, non-inclusive images and humor and that she needed to %u201cshake things up.%u201d She did an ad on YouTube featuring a popular, transgender YouTube personality. Sales plummeted. Bars dropped Bud Light%u00ae from their taps. Boycotts were organized. Kid Rock made a YouTube video of himself blasting away at a Bud Light%u00ae can with an AK-47, which got millions of views. In revenue and stock value, her creative misadventure cost some $40 billion. That%u2019s a lot of cans of beer. In baseball, it%u2019s called an unforced error. The Bud Light%u00ae customer base making it the best-selling light beer had not, in any way, indicated boredom or disapproval toward its advertising nor, I%u2019m confident, was there research and careful testing to support her creative and radical ideas. The customer was grossly misunderstood. Maybe disdained. And a very, very big price was paid.
