According to recent reports, the advertising firm linked to Bud Light’s disastrous promotional stunt with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney has fired several of its top executive leaders amid a restructuring.
The California-based Captiv8 reportedly fired 13 employees in July and more recently laid off 30 employees in the latest round of headcount reduction. This equates to approximately 20 percent of the company’s staff.
However, it is unclear if the significant cutback in its workforce resulted from the Dylan Mulvaney disaster, but one could certainly speculate that it set the company back. As one fired executive told the New York Post, “I’m guessing that Dylan Mulvaney contributed. They weren’t laying people off before [April 1] .”
Apparently, as the boycott unfolded, Bud Light blamed a third-party marketing firm for sending Mulvaney the beer can with the activist’s face on it. The beer maker has never publicly stated the firm responsible for this promotion, but several insiders have testified that it was indeed Captiv8.
The advertising agency’s CEO, Krishna Subramanian, recently informed the remaining Capitv8 employees that the mass firings were critical to a “reorganization” initiative at the firm. One source commented that some of the company’s top brass were not spared from the layoffs, claiming “there were several department heads” who were fired.
The American Tribune reported earlier this summer that Captiv8 was in “serious panic mode” as the Bud Light fallout was continuing at a breakneck pace. A source claimed, “Internally, the company was in serious panic mode.”
Captiv8’s website indicates the company is no stranger to the world of woke advertising, with a section titled “Diversity In Action: Build always-on diversity into all aspects of influencer programs.” The description of its “Diversity and Influence” section reads:
As a minority-owned business, we understand how important it is to celebrate uniqueness and embrace diversity. Our platform is built to amplify unique voices, allowing discoverability for ethnicity, disabilities, and gender and sexual identity. Creators get the opportunity to self-identify, and allow brands to truly see them.
Our goal is to build a diverse and equitable influencer landscape, and with that in mind, we launched Cr8 Change, an ERG dedicated towards ongoing DEI initiatives.
Like Captiv8, Bud Light also underwent a “restructuring” of sorts within its marketing leadership. The American Tribune reported that the two marketing executives allegedly responsible for the Mulvaney fiasco, Daniel Blake, the Group Vice President for Marketing, and Alissa Heinerscheid, the Bud Light Marketing Vice President, were no longer employed at the company.
Heinerscheid was quoted saying, “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.”
Ironically, initiatives that unfolded under her watch may have doomed the Bud Light brand far more than the “out of touch” consumer base she wanted to distance the brand image from. As the timeless adage states, “Go woke, go broke.”
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