Everybody Has A Boss

So after two weeks of radio silence, Anheuser Busch sent out its US CEO to issue a bland non-apology for the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco. I went looking for pictures of Brendan Whitworth, and what I found was what you'd expect -- he's a pretty boy, there to look good at employee town halls, but someone else is running the show. People have been parsing out just what he intended to say in his statement, but I think the real lesson in this episode is that everyone has a boss, including the US CEO of Anheuser.

Over a two-wwek period when Bud Light went radio silent on social media, yuou can bet there was a lot of behind-the-scenes chatter between New York and Brussels, where Mr Whitworth's bosses are, about the impact of the Dyhlan Mulvaney controversy, with Whitworth giving happy talk, the way pretty boy CEOs do, about how this is just a blip, it'll all blow over, and so forth.

Finally the bosses in Brussels lost patience and told him to say something, except by this point he was between a rock and a hard place, and his speechwriters were forced to write about the only thing they could -- after all, if he came out and said it was a big mistake and apologized, he'd have hundreds of screaming trans guys storming company headquarters, while if he said an elaborate bunch of nothing, things would work themselves out, and the bosses would be happy. More or less.

According to the UK Daily Mail,

According to sources cited by the Daily Wire, 'no one at a senior level' was aware of the Mulvaney brand partnership before it launched, and the campaign was undertaken by a 'low-level marketing staffer.'

Executives have 'paused' new marketing campaigns so they can implement a more robust vetting process for future projects, according to the report.

While media attention has focused on Bud Light VP Alissa Heinerscheid for her potential role overseeing the campaign, [marketing and PR expertr Gareth] Boyd argued that responsibility for overseeing protocols to approve new marketing campaigns ultimately falls with the company's CEO.

. . . Boyd questioned whether proper contingency planning was carried out at Anheuser-Busch before launching the partnership with Mulvaney, saying it appeared the company did not have a response plan in place.

'You would have thought they would have had something saying, "okay, in a worst case scenario of backlash, what do we fall back to?"' he said.

I think the answer there is simple: they didn't have a contingency plan because nobody ever thought they'd need one. There was just no inkling that this would be remotely controversial. My guess is that the "sources' who talked to the Daily Wire were in Brussels, not New York, and they're asking, or should be asking, who hired Alissa Heinerscheid and who thought it would be a good idea to let her think she had a free rein on Bud Light's branding. That's the one who should be fired.

But this brings us to the next question: has Alissa been fired? The fact checkers say

No, Bud Light’s VP for marketing hasn’t been fired. Her Linkedin profile still describes her as the vice president of the brand and the “first female to lead the largest beer brand in the industry.”

Moreover, there aren’t any official reports or press releases from Budweiser confirming that she has lost her job.

But this YouTuber has better insight:

First, corporations don't normally issue press releases saying anyone's been fired. At most, a CEO who's gotten into hot water with the board will make a statement that he's leaving to spend more time with his family. Farther down, all that happens is that the person's extension will just keep ringing. If you try to call the switchboard to ask about it, they'll just reply they're sorry, that person isn't an employee here. (It's happened to me.)

But I think the YouTuber above has it right: that Alissa has deleted her LinkedIn profile is as good a sign as any that she's out. I'd say there's a good chance she showed up at her office one day last week and found it had someone else's name on the door, and when she asked about it, she was told she was not an employee there, if she even needed to ask.

But if she did ask, or if she hired an attorney to pursue the matter, I think there would be two clear grounds for termination. The first would be, as the sources intimated to The Daily Wire, that she exceeded her authority in approving the partnership deal, notwithstanding her superiors in New York would likely have approved it even if she'd asked. The second would be that, in the videos she made in the week or so before the Dylan Mulvaney deal went public, she spoke to media without going through the corporate PR department. That'll get anyone escorted out the door.

This leaves aside the question of how many MBA types get away with this sort of thing every day of the week, but that's related to the question of why despots tolerate flagrant corruption among their vassals. They tolerate it until it's convenient to send them to a firing squad for flagrant corruption. An effective corporate system makes sure anyone can be fired for a good excuse that's already right there on the shelf.

Everybody has a boss, including Brendan Whitworth, who's basically just there to look pretty.