Will the boycott of Bud Light soon end and restore the woke beer brand’s fortunes in the wake of its Dylan Mulvaney disaster and resulting heavy financial losses? Anson Frericks, who served as president of Anheuser-Busch’s business unit and spent more than a decade at the company, said that the boycott is here to stay, at least until Bud Light satisfactorily apologizes for the Mulvaney situation.
That came in an interview Frericks did with Fox Business, in which he said that consumers feel that they are having an impact with the boycott and so won’t back off of it until they feel the company has made satisfactory amends.
Speaking on that, he said, “Every single week these sales numbers are being reported, and they’re getting worse and worse every single week. So I see this continuing to drag on until Bud Light makes a comment about what they stand for and what customers they’re going to serve.”
Continuing, he added, “With Bud Light, that was never part of the brand or part of the message. And I think that’s what’s upset so many people here. And that’s why I think this boycott is going to go on a lot longer than people give it credit for.”
Explaining why a feeling of success is important for keeping the boycott going, he then added, “There’s two reasons that boycotts tend to be successful. The first is when it’s easy for consumers to switch to other brands. And it’s secondarily when people feel like they’re having an impact. And in this, Bud Light, it’s not very that much different than Coors Light or Miller Lite. It’s water, it’s barley, it’s hops. What sets it apart is its messaging. And so it’s easy for consumers to switch the grocery store, the convenience store, and… consumers feel like they’re having an impact.”
And, in his view, Bud Light shot itself in the foot by jumping out of the neutral, apolitical space it was formerly in and taking a political stance with the Mulvaney partnership. As he put it:
“What does Bud Light stand for? Bud Light… was a brand that was never about politics. This is always about a brand that brought people together. It was about football, It was about sports. It was about music. It never got involved in political situations. That’s why it was enjoyed by both Republicans and Democrats equally, and that was what made the brand actually remarkable, is that it was remarkably unpolitical and this is just a political situation they should not have got themselves in.”
Importantly, he also argued that Bud Light’s attempts to rekindle a consumer following with pandering commercials won’t work, saying, “One thing that they haven’t done is say they made a mistake with this campaign and been clear about who they’re going to serve moving forward. Is it going to be their shareholders and their customers who want them just to create a Bud Light that’s apolitical, or are they going to be serving their stakeholders? These are the people that want BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, who are asking them to serve political organizations, activists.“
"*" indicates required fields