The consumer backlash to Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney marketing scheme has grown into a serious problem for the woke company, as its competitors have used the opportunity to swoop in and swipe market share from it.
Such is what industry journal Beer Business Daily noted in its report on the matter, noting that Bud Light’s dollar share for last week cratered by about the same amount as its main competitors, Miller Lite and Coors Light, gained.
Specifically, Beer Business Daily’s report noted that Coors Light’s dollar share went up 3.5% over the week and Miller Lite’s dollar share jumped by 3.1% for the week. Their market shares increasing, it notes, likely means that Bud Light is getting hit not from a fall in consumer demand for beer but rather from consumer anger at it over the Dylan Mulvaney marketing scheme.
Further, it reports that, over the same period, Coors Light cases sales went up 10.6% and Miller Lite jumped by an even larger number, 11.5%. Meanwhile, over the same period, Bud Light was hurt by a similar total amount. Over the year, its cases have fallen 6.7%, 10.7% for the week ending on April 8, and more than 21% for the week ending on April 15. So that would suggest the boycott of Bud Light escalated rather than fading away as time wore on.
Unsurprisingly, the marketing VP behind the disaster, Alissa Heinerscheid, has been replaced by a Budweiser executive while she takes a leave of absence. The American Tribune, reporting on her background and unrepentant attitude regarding the disaster, said:
Heinerscheid was hired in June 2022 to take over Bud LIght’s marketing and overhaul the brand image associated with the beer. She graduated from the prestigious Wharton business school and bragged about being the first female leader at Bud Light in its history. Heinerscheid expressed a palpable disdain for the beer’s traditional target audience calling it, “fratty” and “out of touch”.
Heinerscheid said, “I’m a businesswoman. I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light and it was, this brand is in decline. It’s 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.”
She continued talking about making the brand more “inclusive”, stating, “So I had this super clear mandate, like we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand and my what I brought to that was a belief in okay, what is what are we what does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity 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 and representation is it sort of the heart of evolution, you got to see people who reflect you in the work and we have a hangover.” Completely alienating Bud Light’s target audience, she said, “I mean, Bud Light had been kind of a brand of Friday. Kind of out of touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
Alissa Heinerscheid’s boss, Daniel Blake, who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch’s mainstream brands, has joined her on a leave of absence in the wake of the growing disaster.
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