How’d bringing on transgender social media “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney go for Bud Light? Great, if you believe that any press is good press. Terribly, if you go by the metric of sales, as industry watchers have reported Bud Light’s market share falling off a cliff and its rivals scooping up what it lost.
In fact, the data from BeerBoard, which tracks beer sales, show that Bud Light sales in volume declined by a whopping 34.7% at bars, restaurants and other venues between April 2 and April 15. Further, Bud Light’s sales have declined by 17 percent in dollars, while volume has dropped 21 percent.
So, how does Bud Light plan on recovering? A marketing blitz. Such is what the New York Post reported in an article on Bud Light’s recovery plan, saying:
At a closed-door meeting this week in Washington, DC, Anheuser-Busch executives told US beer distributors they will “spend heavily on the brand after spending fell off a cliff last year,” Benj Steinman, editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights, told The Post.
Bud execs said at the Monday meeting that the fresh marketing push will begin this week, Steinman said, as the beer giant scrambles to reverse the damage from the controversial Mulvaney campaign, which sent sales of Bud Light plunging 17% during the week ended April 15.
Anheuser-Busch “did promise to spend lotsa dough on Bud Light [marketing] this spring and summer, starting with big push this week for the NFL draft,” Steinman wrote in a report to clients on Wednesday that was obtained by The Post.
However, Steinman told the NYP that the meeting “wasn’t that productive and the distributors were hoping for more concrete plans” on how to stop the backlash against Bud Light, which apparently weren’t provided. According to Steinman, the distributors “want to put this behind them” but haven’t received much helpful guidance on how to do so.
Further, the NYP added that Budweiser promised during a series of Zoom meetings with US beer distributors that “there will be an improved screening process before any marketing hits the public,” and that “executives will have to go through a more rigorous screening process.”
Not helping matters is that the VP of Marketing who was behind the Mulvaney scheme and is now on leave, Alissa Heinerscheid, also insulted the beer’s customer base in a now-viral video, 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.
“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 Friday. Kind of out of touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
For reference, here’s the video that started the Bud Light boycott from which it’s now trying to recover:
Dylan Mulvaney is now getting paid $10000+ to be the face of brands including:
•BudLight
•Tampax
•Kate Spade
•Kitchen Aid
•Plaza Hotel
•Stella McCartney
•CrestMock Women= Get Rewarded #dylanmulvaney #trans #transgender pic.twitter.com/IQHb3qRnFZ
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 2, 2023
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded videos
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