You would think that being amongst the big boys of the American beer industry Budweiser would be above taking pot shots at the bottom feeders. That is once again not the case, however, as they have followed up their craft beer bashing Super Bowl commercial with a series of more recent attacks.

First up was the Bud and Burger campaign, a thinly-veiled cheap shot at the little guys who don’t see mass producing piss and bottling it as the height of beer production. That advert below:

This has now been followed up with a tweet on June 10 that doesn’t beat around the bush…

So why do they deem it necessary to keep this assault going? Here’s Fortune with some insight:

Will the ads convert craft drinkers over to Bud? Of course not. But they could nudge Bud drinkers who were starting to edge toward craft back to macro beers – especially if the reaction of craft drinkers creates an aura of beer snobbery…

It’s a textbook case of preaching to the choir.

And that choir could use a pep talk. Craft brewers now produce roughly one out of every 10 beers sold in the United States – and the number of craft breweries is growing at a tremendous pace. Last year, there were 3,418 craft breweries operating in the U.S. Compare that to just 44 breweries (large and small) in 1980 and 537 in 1991. By the end of the year, experts say, there will be a new craft brewery opening in the U.S. every 12 hours.

Perhaps the little guys are set to mobilise forces and make a real dent on Bud’s bottom line, with 19,3 % of the total consumer beer spend going to craft beer in 2014. That being said, it will take more than some bullying adverts to turn your general public away from a name that is as synonymous with America as McDonald’s and overweight people on mobility scooters.

[source:fortune]