The blowback from Anheuser Busch / InBev’s decision to team up with Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney continues to wreak havoc on the Bud Light Brand and InBev’s bottom line.
In April, the Anheuser-Busch-owned brand became the center of controversy over a promotion it started with Mulvaney. The marketing fiasco has cost InBev over $27 Billion in sales, and tens of millions of former consumers continue to boycott the beer.
In more bad news for the Belgian beverage giant, this month, Modelo Especial dethroned Bud Light as the top American beer, as its sales increased more than 15 percent from the same time a year ago. The brand has been forced to buy back expired beer from wholesalers and is trying to deal with the people at every branch of the sales cycle who are losing profits.
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According to a pop-up bar business owner, as Bud Light’s popularity continues to plummet, corporate and personal events refuse to carry the Anheuser-Busch brand at their gatherings.
Catarina Tucker, the founder of Barnastics – a mobile bartending company based in New Jersey- told Fox News there had been a ‘significant shift’ away from Bud Light among her clients recently.
Though Tucker said the liquor stores she works with have yet to begin selling Bud Light at a discount, the consumer backlash has been tangible.
‘Demand has plummeted completely. No one wants it at their event anymore,’ she said.
‘ A couple of clients have expressed their feelings behind it to me, and it’s no longer popular.’
She said her customers and consumers are becoming more aware of whether the brands they support align with their personal and political values.
Tucker said she does not believe the brand will soon rebound in popularity.
‘With the feedback that I’ve gotten and how strongly a lot of clients feel about it, it [the company] doesn’t switch gears, I don’t see the popularity picking back up,’ she said.
Tucker’s company website allows customers to create a custom proposal that enables the company to see and understand any shifts in demand for specific products.
‘Sometimes things blow over,’ she noted but added that Bud Light’s actions as a corporation ‘hold a lot of weight’ with their consumers.
Tucker said she has not noticed the same plummeting demand for other Anheuser-Busch products, like Budweiser, but ‘anything Bud Light, they just won’t support.’
Sales of Bud Light have been in a freefall for months, falling about 25 percent in the last month, and according to JPMorgan, they expect A.B. InBev’s earnings before interest and tax in the U.S. to drop 26 percent this year, on a 12 percent drop in volume and a 10 percent decline in sales.
Catarina Tucker, founder of Barnastics said consumers are becoming increasingly aware of whether the brands they support align with their values, and as a result, "are actively seeking alternatives to Bud Light, gravitating towards craft beers, specialty cocktails, and premium… pic.twitter.com/VgvWZQHwwH
— Jasmina Simz (@Jasmina6817) June 11, 2023
1- “Catarina Tucker, the founder of Barnastics, told Fox News Digital. "Bud Light, once a popular option, is no longer capturing the attention or enthusiasm of event organizers and attendees."
“Tucker said she does not foresee popularity of the beer picking up any time soon.”…
— IT Guy (@ITGuy1959) June 11, 2023
InBev CEO Michel Doukeris has downplayed the impact of the backlash, saying Bud Light’s U.S. sales declines in the first three weeks of April represented only one percent of InBev’s global volumes.
‘We believe we have the experience, the resources, and the partners to manage this,’ Doukeris said during a conference call with investors earlier this month.
Conservatives have continued with the boycott, leading the Belgian-based brewer to place two executives responsible for the partnership, Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing, and her boss, Daniel Blake, on leave in April.
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Heinerscheid was hired to overhaul Bud Light’s marketing in June 2022 to freshen its image and make the brand more female-friendly. But the Mulvaney partnership destroyed that attempted makeover.
After Anheuser-Busch tried to distance itself from the Mulvaney promotion, Bud Light also faced backlash from the opposite direction, with pro-LGBTQ groups accusing the company of abandoning the transgender influencer.
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