Bud Light is still reeling from the Dylan Mulvaney blunder, a former Anheuser-Busch executive has disclosed. To date, the company continues to hemorrhage customers since the unfortunate campaign nearly two years ago.
In April 2023, Bud Light partnered with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney to celebrate “365 Days of Girlhood,” a slap in the face of women who are actually women.
A widespread consumer boycott resulted in the loss of billions in stock prices and sales. The company also lost its market leadership to Michelob Ultra and Modelo Especial. Eight months down the line, Bud Light sales were still down 32% in 32% in Q4 2023. The company also laid hundreds of workers in the same year.
Nearly two years later the company continues to suffer the consequences of embracing wokeism.
“They haven’t [recovered] at all,” former Anheuser-Busch President of Operations Anson Frericks told FOX Business, adding that “they continue to shed customers.”
“I think that’s one of the most interesting parts about this story is that they lost 30% of their customers,” Frericks said. “Millions of customers, billions of dollars of shareholder value over the last couple of years.”
However, the former executive noted that Bud Light was working to reverse the damage, which was proving to be a monumental task.
“They are advertising Bud Light. And candidly, the commercials are actually pretty good,” he said. “They have Shane Gillis who’s about the opposite of Dylan Mulvaney. You couldn’t have maybe someone more opposite. They have Post Malone, but the problem is they’ve lost a lot of their customers.”
The executive also noted that customers were confused if the company would continue to partner with “Shane Gillis and fun in football, or is it Dylan Mulvaney?’” He suggested that the company must come clean to win people’s trust. “Until the company really comes back and says clearly what Bud Light is going to be? I don’t know if any of their loyal customers are going to come back,” he added.
Instead of acknowledging the overwhelming negative customer feedback and apologizing, Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch beat around the bush saying, it “never intended to be part of a divisive conversation.”
Subsequently, customers likely suspect that the company still coddles transgenderism and could pull another “Mulvaney” in the future, and the Shane Gillis and Post Malone partnership are an attempt to pull the wool over their eyes.
Thus, even customers who wish to move past the Mulvaney fiasco might feel reluctant, afraid of potential future embarrassment if the company reverts to trans promotion.
Meanwhile, Bud Light may serve as a lasting reminder that embracing wokeism ruins businesses, especially when companies stubbornly refuse to acknowledge their mistakes. Others such as Meta, Walmart, Target, Ford, and Toyota have rolled back on woke policies without much backlash.
For example, Meta recently removed tampons from men’s bathrooms, angering transgender employees who started restocking the company’s supplies with their own.
