Bud Light’s disastrous decision to have Dylan Mulvaney advertise it in a TikTok post during the March Madness championships continues to lead to serious pain for the beer giant. In fact, the boycott of its products has continued and its sales just fell nearly 27 percent compared to last year.
For the week ending on June 10, Bud Light’s sales fell by 26.8 percent compared to the same period last year, the Daily Mail reports. That is up from a 24.4 percent drop for the week ending June 3 compared to the same time last year and is the worst decline for the beer brand since the April 1 video came out. The previous record for the worst week was the week ending May 25.
Additionally, the sales crash comes alongside public cases of recognition from executives in Anheuser-Busch InBev that the Mulvaney ad was a bad decision. For example, while accepting an award for Creative Marketer of the Year at Cannes Lions, Anheuser-Busch’s chief marketing officer, Marcel Marcondes, said that the backlash to the ad was a serious wakeup call for the brand.
Speaking on the matter, he said, “In times like this, when things get divisive and controversial so easily, I think it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers first of all to be very humble. That’s what we’re doing, being very humble, and really reminding ourselves of what we should do best every day, which is to really understand our consumers. Which is to really celebrate and appreciate every consumer that loves our brands—but in a way that can make them be together, not apart.”
Similarly, AB InBev’s North American CEO , Brendan Whitworth, recently released a statement on the current situation. Though he refused to apologize for the Mulvaney advertisement, he did tell Bud Light customers that the brand’s future ads would be about beer instead of social issues, writing, “to all our valued consumers, we hear you. Our summer advertising launches next week, and you can look forward to Bud Light reinforcing what you’ve always loved about our brand – that it’s easy to drink and easy to enjoy.”
Whitworth also admitted that the ad pushed Bud Light into the culture war limelight rather than a discussion about beer, writing, “We recognize that over the last two months, the discussion surrounding our company and Bud Light has moved away from beer, and this has impacted our consumers, our business partners, and our employees.”
Some still haven’t gotten the message, even at Bud Light. Former vice president of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid said that Bud Light was a “brand in decline” that needed to attract a new audience or else its future was jeopardized. “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 said. Her efforts to do so just cost it a 27 percent drop in sales compared to last year.
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