Hot on the heels of its previous worst week yet, Bud Light just suffered another, even worse blow with an eye-popping sales decline for the week ending June 17th. Previously, Bud Light’s worst week since the April 1 Dylan Mulvaney ad was for the week ending June 10, when it fell by nearly 27 percent compared to that week in 2022.
The week ending the 17th outdid that by a substantial margin and took the cake with a massive 28.5 percent decline compared to that week in 2022. Modelo has been outselling Bud Light weekly since May.
Forbes added a mental image to the sales decline figures in a report on the matter in early June, saying, “6.7 million. That’s how many fewer cases of Bud Light were sold this April and May compared to last year, according to NielsenIQ data cited by Bank of America.”
Further, Forbes reported at the time that stock analysts at Bernstein, Nadine Sarwat and Trevor Stirling, concluded when trying to set a price target for the stock of Anheuser Busch InBev that the Bud Light parent company could see a near-permanent 15 percent decline in sales of Bud Light.
Meanwhile, other Anheuser Busch InBev brands are suffering as well under the boycott, with Budweiser down more than 12 percent for the week ending June 17 and Michelob Ultra fell by 4 percent for the same period.
As those brands crash, particularly Bud Light, its competitors are making huge leaps in sales. Modelo rose nearly 9 percent for the week ending June 17 while Miller Lite is up 16 percent for the same period and Coors Light and Yuengling Lager are up by even more at 21.8 percent and 25.1 percent, respectively.
Adding more fuel to the anti-Bud Light fire was that the CEO did not apologize for the Mulvaney ad in a recent statement and that the company appears to have sponsored a Toronto “Pride” event where children were exposed to make marchers.
Bud Light was a sponsor of a Toronto pride event where completely naked people marched around in front of children. pic.twitter.com/U6LWcMSYMP
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 25, 2023
Despite those two major missteps, Bud Light does appear to be trying to move away from politics and back toward selling beer. As The American Tribune recently reported, the brand recently released a new, summer-themed advertisement that stands in stark contrast to its April 1 Mulvaney ad.
In the new ad, scenes meant to appeal to the average, non-transgender consumer roll on the screen, such as romanticized scenes of barbeques and spending time with family and friends. “Good Times” plays in the background as people have good times with their friends.
Of course, the scene is wholly unrealistic given the laughing stock Bud Light has become and the substantial chance of mockery for any normal person caught drinking one. So, though the Bud Light marketing team might want to pretend normal people are cracking open a Bud Light as they have a good time with their families, the sales data shows something quite different.
Rather, as one commenter on Twitter put it, “You probably should just write off normal people buying your beer. You’re not getting them back…Anything else you do, after what you’ve done, just looks like pathetic pandering.”
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