Bud Light used to be the top beer in America by a wide margin, then it lost its crown to Modelo after the disastrous April 1 Dylan Mulvaney ad and the resulting boycott. Since then, it’s continuing seeing its sales decline by devastating percentages.
And while sales have declined compared to 2022, so has its popularity with the public. According to a recent YouGov poll, Bud Light dropped from being the ninth most popular beer in 2022 to its current spot at 15. The top five popular beers are, in order, Guinness, Corona, Heineken, Samuel Adams, and Blue Moon.
The remaining beers that are ahead of Bud Light are Budweiser, Modelo, Corona Extra, Stella Artois, Coors, Miller High Life, Corona Light, Miller, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
However, the results are different by age group. Millennials, for example, have a far better opinion of Bud Light, putting it at number 4. They put only Guinness, Modelo, and White Claw ahead of it. For Baby Boomers, by contrast, Bud Light comes in at a dismal number 21. Gen X has only a slightly better opinion of Bud Light than Gen X, ranking it as number 18. That difference in how different ages view it is likely based on political views, as older people are more conservative than younger people.
For adults of all ages, men put Bud Light as number 13, slightly better than average, whereas women put it as number 17. That difference in how men and women view it could be because women are more worried about what those it supports might do to their kids, because women don’t prefer any beer, but particularly a mass-produced light beer with a reputation as being cheap, as much as other drinks, or some mix of those two or other factors.
It is somewhat surprising that men don’t dislike the brand more considering that the former Bud Light VP who set up the Mulvaney ad attacked the brand for its connection with men in fraternities, saying, “We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out of touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
YouGov, describing how it conducts its popularity polls, says, “Based on over 20 million responses, and growing daily, YouGov Ratings provides a way to determine the nationally representative popularity score for thousands of things, from brands and products to companies and people. We’ve then connected each popularity rating in our enormous database to offer a deeper insight into fans of these things. For example, we show you what the fans of each entity are like not only in terms of age-group and gender but all the other things they especially like, giving you a real sense of what distinguishes different groups in the population By publishing these nationally representative popularity scores together with our other data, YouGov Ratings showcases the breadth and depth of YouGov data. The richness of the information is astonishing, even to us.”
It adds that its polling data is quite accurate as to how Americans think of certain things, writing, “YouGov Ratings is the biggest and boldest attempt ever made to quantify what America thinks. We’re doing this by publishing nationally representative popularity scores for thousands of things. YouGov Ratings is built on top of our accurate and precise methodology, which the Pew Research Center says “consistently outperformed” other online polling companies.“
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