Bud Light has managed to unite the left and right in anger
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Bud Light, America's most popular beer, has managed to anger just about everybody.
Belinda Mendoza manages Dragster, a queer bar in Seattle that caters to the kind of customer Bud Light was hoping to court with its recent partnership with trans actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney. But when the brand failed to stick up for Mulvaney after her Instagram ad provoked conservatives' calls for a boycott, Mendoza says it was an easy decision to stop carrying products from Anheuser-Busch InBev, the brand's parent company. AB InBev's beers weren't all that popular with her customers, she said, and the company "has never really aligned with what I believe in."
AB InBev is in damage control mode as it seeks to squash the backlash from the Mulvaney partnership; the company is planning to triple its U.S. marketing spending over the summer, according to reporting from Ad Age. It's also offering free cases of Bud Light to wholesale employees, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, and is assuring consumers it "never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people" according to a letter from CEO Brandon Whitworth.
Bud Light's bid for inclusion has barely dented the brand's market dominance. AB InBev said on an earnings call last week that declines in the first three weeks of April, as uproar mounted, represented only a 1 percent drop in its global sales volumes. But the magnitude of backlash shows the risk brands face in trying to expand their customer base - especially when doing so puts them in the crossfire of the culture wars.
Todd Evans, president and CEO of Rivendell Media, which specializes in queer marketing, said that Bud Light's about-face in its partnership with Mulvaney made the situation worse, creating a case study of "what not to do." The company's first mistake, Evans said, was kicking off the effort to expand its audience "in an open digital environment where anything can go anywhere" rather than with a traditional, targeted ad.
"Bud Light remains the number one brand in the U.S. nationally in volume and dollar sales," Anheuser-Busch said in a statement to The Washington Post. In an earnings call last week, AB InBev's CEO Michel Doukeris told investors the company believes it has the "experience, the resources and the partners" to manage the controversy that has followed the Mulvaney partnership.
Other big companies like Levi's and Disney have faced backlash in the past for courting queer markets, Evans notes, but calls for boycotts have fallen flat when the companies involved have stood by their marketing efforts. Bud Light is struggling, Evans said, because "they took a stand and didn't stand behind it."
If Anheuser-Busch InBev had said, "We stand on the side of equality," Evans said, the opposition "probably would have died there."
Bud Light's sales are currently down 3 percent for the year, compared to the same period last year, according to data from Bump Williams Consulting. Case sales slumped 8 percent in the same time frame, said founder and CEO Bump Williams.
Bud Light has been trying to alter its image. In a podcast released in March, Bud Light's vice president of marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, said that the brand is "in decline" and expressed a need to evolve its "fratty" identity into something more inclusive and appealing to younger consumers.
When Heinerscheid pondered how the brand might change, she aimed for "a campaign that's truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men," she said on the "Make Yourself at Home" podcast. Amid the uproar over the partnership with Mulvaney, Heinerscheid and her boss were placed on leave.
Bud Light started that rebranding effort with a March Madness-related clip that Mulvaney posted to her Instagram, in which she showed off a can of beer bearing her likeness that AB InBev had sent her to commemorate a year since her transition to womanhood. The blowback was swift and noisy - but not altogether surprising, given how much the move departed from Bud Light's long-standing identity, according to Cary Cooper, professor of organizational psychology at the University of Manchester and a scholar with the Academy of Management.
"They're trying to make sure they don't lose either of these demographics," Cooper said. "I don't know if that's going to be very effective."
In an interview with the Financial Times, AB InBev CEO Doukeris blamed the hit to Bud Light on "misinformation and confusion" online about the extent of the brand's partnership with Mulvaney, which left some consumers under the impression that "every can would be like the one that was in that post." Others thought the can commemorating Mulvaney marked the start of an official Bud Light campaign.
"We never intended to make it for general production and sale for the public," Doukeris told the FT. "It was one post. It was not an advertisement."
Bud Light's partnership with Mulvaney touched a nerve at a time when anti-transgender legislation is on the rise across the country. In 2023, Republican state legislators have advanced dozens of pieces of legislation seeking to restrict transgender people's access to health care, sports and public accommodations, and prohibit the ability to change a person's name or gender on a driver's license or birth certificate.
Transgender Americans experience stigma and systemic inequality in many aspects of their lives, according to a wide-ranging poll from The Washington Post and KFF. In the survey, 63 percent of transgender adults reported that they "sometimes" or "frequently" feel discriminated against because of their gender identity or expression.
Mulvaney did not respond to a request for comment from The Post. As uproar to her Bud Light ad mounted, the influencer took a break from social media. She addressed the situation for the first time in an Instagram video April 27, nearly a month after the backlash began. She didn't mention Bud Light by name, but said recent events had practically "killed the people-pleaser" in her and expressed frustration with the ways she's been dehumanized.
"I've always tried to love everyone, you know, even the people who make it really, really hard," Mulvaney said.
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