"You can’t unring that bell!" — Internet reacts to new Bud Light ad where Shane Gillis stumbles into the wrong commercial

In a recently released Bud Light commercial, things went hilariously wrong when comedian Shane Gillis realized that he was in a high-end cologne advertisement instead of a beer ad. Titled 'Wrong Commercial,' the video has caused a stir among netizens, garnering almost five million views at the time of writing. Bud Light, Budweiser's flagship low-calorie beverage, was first introduced in 1982.

The advertisement begins with all the hallmarks of a quintessential high-end cologne commercial - black and white visuals with a model sitting on a sofa and a guitarist screaming in the background. However, sitting beside the model is Shane Gillis holding a beer and looking confused.

The comedian breaks the fourth wall and gestures to the ceiling, saying:

"I think i'm in the wrong commercial. "

The scene swiftly cuts to Andre, who is enjoying himself with friends. The breaking of the fourth wall and the self-aware humor of the advertisement prompted fans to hop on to X and share their reactions. One netizen on X tweeted:

"You can’t unring that bell!"

Some popular comments are as follows:

"If they took this approach from the start, sales would be soaring," another opined.

"Still not drinking that piss water," another added.

Many fans theorized that the commercial mocks the quintessential 'woke culture.'

"It's mocking it to a degree. The woke guy had fun at the wings place and Shane wanted out of the woke commercial. They portrayed 1 as fun and the other as pretentious and confusing," a fan commented.

"This doesn't mock woke culture. It embraces them both. It only makes light of the fact that both guys are out of place. Bud Light is trying to play both sides. They should have never allowed woke ideology to intrude on and threaten conservative tradition, culture, history, and space to begin with," one user theorized.

"I like it. It tells me the NEW person in charge of marketing Bud Light understands their customer. It also takes a jab at woke the way the "woke" guy is having a blast with the Bud Light people. I think this is [the brand's] apology. We should forgive and move on," one fan wrote on X.

However, some netizens also criticized the brand because of the 2023 boycott campaign following its collaboration with transgender actress and TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney.

"Bud Lite will never come back. It will stand fast as a monument to the moment when America decided it had had enough," a netizen claimed.

"Too late. The Bud Light executives never apologized. They can hop in their Jaguars and drive away," another user wrote.

"And yet, to get its customers back @budlight simply would need to issue a heartfelt apology which they refuse to do," a fan inferred on X.

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The Bud Light boycott campaign explained

The Queerties 2023 Awards Celebration - Source: Getty (Photo by Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images)

On April 1, 2023, Bud Light launched a promotional campaign in collaboration with transgender actress and social media personality Dylan Mulvaney. The 27-year-old promoted the company's beer during March Madness through a short video on Instagram. This move was met with widespread backlash, resulting in mass boycotts from conservatives.

Critics blamed newly appointed Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid for the advertising campaign and the following backlash. Appointed in July 2022, Heinerscheid stated that her goal was to make the brand more inclusive to encourage young drinkers to use their product. In an interview for Make Yourself At Home on March 23, 2023, she said:

"It has been in decline for a really long time. And if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light ... It's like, we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. And my ... what I brought to that was a belief in, okay, what does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity."

She continued:

"It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that's truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men."

According to Barron's, Bud Light's sales fell between 11% and 26%, while AB InBev's stock prices fell by 20% in May 2023. This plummet resulted in the brand losing its place as the top-selling beer brand in the United States - a position it had held for 20 years.