Published in the Pawtucket Times on May 13, 2002

This Bud’s Not for You.”

That’s what radio commentator Bill Benson told his vast WMKV-FM listening audience in Cincinnati, Ohio, last July when he called for Anheuser-Bush to pull a radio commercial that used elder abuse to pitch Bud Ice beer.

Sadly, this month Bill Benson reported in is Washington Aging Report that Anheuser-Busch again has brewed “bad faith” with the showing of another trashy television commercial.

Last July, Benson rallied aging advocates from across the nation to successfully force Anheuser-Bush, the maker of Budweiser beer, to pull a controversial radio commercial off the air.

Benson – a former acting assistant secretary for aging at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who now heads the Maryland-based Benson Consulting Group- along with the AARP and aging advocates, condemned the St. Louis-based beer company for using ageism to sell its brews.

Last July, much to the surprise or Anheuser-Busch officials, wide-spread criticism erupted with the release of its advertising campaign, “She Married Steven Buck Simpson.”

The commercial featured a 22-year-old woman gleefully talking about how she physically, emotionally and financially abused her frail 93-year-old tycoon husband. Ultimately, the young woman leaves the country in her elder husband’s private jet taking away all his money.

Benson along with elder law attorneys, ombudsmen, and aging advocates, called the advertising campaign tacky, bombarding the station’s largest beer maker with calls, tells  letters and emails.

“Elder abuse is not a joking matter and your message to the country is inappropriate,” said AARP President Ester Canja in a letter sent to Anheuser-Busch CEO August A. Busch III.

When the dust settled this public relations fiasco, the commercial was quickly pulled.

But now a new television commercial has drawn the ire of Benson and his fellow aging advocates.

In a recent radio commentary, Paul Greenwood, who heads the Elder Abuse Prosecution Union at San Diego County’s District Attorney’s Office, told Benson of a commercial he viewed while watching a televised NBA basketball game on April 29 on TNT

Greenwood became annoyed when Anheuser-Busch ran a spot featuring young people ripping off vulnerable adults.

The offensive commercial began with a young couple seated on a dining room table with the aging parents of the young woman. The young man, evidently the daughter’s significant other tells her elderly parents that he and his daughter look forward to moving in and gaining the property when they die.  Then he apparently complements the elderly parents for still having “motor skills” and finishes by saying, “She tells me you are loaded.”

Every day Greenwood sees the impact of exploitation of older Americans, said Benson.  His unit has prosecuted 124 felony elder abuse cases in 2000, and 147 felony cases in 2001.  This year, the number of cases prosecuted may well reach 225. That’s why Greenwood got offended when the beer commercials trivialized the financial exploitation of the elderly.

Just as he did when the last commercial raised his ire. Benson put the spotlight on the new Anheuser-Busch spot, giving it a thumbs-down in his latest Washington Aging Report and calling on thousands of aging advocates , via the internet, to urge the company to drop the commercial.

At press time, Anheuser-Busch officials had no comment about the latest controversial ad campaign.

Maybe it is time for the beer maker to solicit proposals to seek the services of a new advertising firm, one that can create material that is both humorous and creative, yet not offensive.

At the very least, they should require the creative types who develop the company’s advertising strategies to attend sensitivity training seasons.

In his radio  commentary, Benson firmly stated “my taste buds will no longer taste Bud again.” With hundreds of thousands of aging advocates and seniors following his  lead Anheuser-Busch just might finally get it at least this time around.