Content isn't king

The NFL may be America's most popular sports league, but it's not a miracle worker.

"The shield" makes money by the millions for players and billions for owners, but if Bud Light expects their partnership with the NFL to resurrect their image and their sales, they may be disappointed.

Bud CEO Carlos Brito thinks otherwise and has bet $50 million on this premise. "When you become the exclusive sponsor of something as huge as the NFL, the biggest sports franchise in the U.S., you have tons of content and that's what consumers are looking for. They're not just looking for nice ads before and after games. They are looking for content ... and we can provide those contents."

Here's an idea, instead of worrying about the "content" you get from the NFL, what if you invested fifty million bucks in the content of your bottles? What if you did something to differentiate your product? And then what if you owned that instead of trying to borrow interest from the NFL.

Everyone knows Bud Light isn't great beer. It's the stuff you drink when you don't really care about taste. And since nobody cares about taste, they won't care if you make it taste good.

You can still have your gimmicky bottles. You can still put on your singles' cruise. Hell, you can still advertise on the NFL. But at least now you'll give people something to talk about.