This Clever Parody Just Eviscerated One of Budweiser’s Latest Marketing Campaigns

Back at the end of June, Anheuser-Busch graced us with some good old-fashioned feel-good pap, just in time for the fourth of July, pandering to military families in a fairly blatant effort to sell more beer in the American heartland. There was nothing particularly unusual about this little bit of marketing—it’s the kind of thing that has always been associated with the dwindling Budweiser brand (this is the original “Bud Heavy” we’re talking about here), whose middle-aged and senior customer base can reliably be expected to “support the troops” and buy whichever beer purports to do so. The one thing that did make the spot unique, though, was the pitchman that AB InBev had chosen: Kylo Ren himself, Star Wars actor Adam Driver. Some Anheuser exec clearly noted that because Driver also served in the Marines as a young man before being discharged due to injury, he would be an ideal person to appear in the ad, which you can view below:

As we said—pretty standard, rah rah patriotism stuff. At the very least, Budweiser did something nice for this family, even if the conditions for doing so were essentially “Allow us to come into your home to film a commercial about the generosity of this multinational mega corporation.” But it isn’t the kind of thing we’d have dedicated 1,000 words of indignation toward—more of a shrug, before moving on.