Well over a year after Bud Light’s disastrous marketing collaboration with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, conservatives on social media have cheered as data suggests the one-beloved beermaker has not recovered from the boycott that led to plummeting sales. Since the partnership with Mulvaney, Bud Light has been attempting to regain its lost customers through more normal advertisements.
The popular MAGA X account aka shared a graph, showing the precipitous decline in Bud Light’s market share, which began in April 2023 immediately after the Mulvaney collaboration. The trend continued for months, plateauing throughout late 2023 into 2024. However, the graph showed Bud Light further tanking in the summer of 2024.
The conservative influencer wrote, “Budlight has never recovered from the boycott.” Others reacted in the comments section echoing this sentiment. “Love to see it. Every American company should recognize that they operate at the behest of the American people, not the woke … minority,” one person wrote. Another said, “It’s not gonna rebound – they didn’t to themselves for sure.”
Vice President of Marketing at Bud Light, Alyssa Heinerscheid, was blamed for the Mulvaney controversy, typically after she slammed the beer’s brand image as being “fratty” and “out of touch.” Heinerscheid argued that Bud Light needed to shift its brand image to be more inclusive, claiming the beer’s future was at stake.
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. 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. 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.”’
“To Di For” podcast host Kinsey Schofield recently argued that Bud Light’s recent efforts to claw back customers with normal advertising may be “too little, too late.” Speaking about a recent ad featured popular comedian Shane Gillis, Schofield said “the content is great, but their customers, our former customers, are asking, why can’t they apologize?” She added, “I mean, 6 million people have viewed that ad alone from one tweet. But the reaction is not all positive. Some are saying, you know, why couldn’t you have responded with humor from the start?”
She emphasized, “Translation, too little too late. Others are asking if they are allergic to apologies. The execution was great. Shane was the right personality, but it’s going to take some time for these people to come back around.” Sky News host Rita Panahi then said, “Oh, absolutely. And the parent company has lost more than a billion dollars, they just showed you, when you go, woke you can go broke.”
Watch Schofield’s commentary below:
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