Months after Bud Light woke up by teaming up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a partnership, the beer company’s sales are still down 30 percent, with one expert saying drinkers are “just lost forever.”
This is not a parody. Dylan Mulvaney is now the face of Bud Light. pic.twitter.com/cpygA74cG5
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 2, 2023
Things have “got worse” for Bud Light
“The situation at Bud Light has gotten even worse,” Beer Business Daily publisher Harry Schuhmacher told Fox News. “You see that Bud Light is still persistently down about 30% in volume compared to last year, where it has been since May or June. That tells me this is quasi-permanent, which means those consumers are just lost forever.”
“Bud Light’s latest weekly trends – down 26.9% in dollars and down 30.3% in volume – are almost identical to the four-week trends,” he continued, going on to say that Bud Light is likely year will see comparable figures year after year. will subside in the “foreseeable future,” or “at least until April and May 2024, when they will put the controversy behind them.”
⚠️ BUD LIGHT SALES REACH ANOTHER LOW OF ALMOST 40%, MORE THAN 6 MONTHS AFTER THEY HIRED WOKE TIK TOKER DYLAN MULVANEY AS THEIR SPOKESPERSON ⚠️
❗️THE COMPANY IS NOW ON TRACK TO EXIT BUSINESS BY 2026❗️
🚨 WHEN WE ALL WORK TOGETHER WE ARE EXTREMELY POWERFUL 🚨 pic.twitter.com/EPHSusQDzd
— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) September 11, 2023
Related: Anheuser-Busch loses $390 million after Bud Light boycott over Dylan Mulvaney campaign
‘Powerless to fix it’
Schumacher went on to say that products lose valuable shelves and display space once consumers lose confidence in them.
“I think the industry thought it would have recovered by now, but that’s not the case,” he explains. “It’s actually worse than just losing sales because it’s now getting to the point where it’s becoming systemic within the industry, and they’re losing the trust of the retailers and that’s when things start to get bad.”
“See those end caps at the end of the aisles in the grocery store? “If you start to lose that, that’s bad because you not only lose the visibility of the store, but you also lose the ability to load a lot of inventory into the store,” he added. “Displays are an important tool for the beer industry to move beer, and that could be a concern for AB (Anheuser-Busch).”
Schumacher believes the summer of 2024 will be a “big test” for Bud Light’s future, and the brand needs to win back drinkers by then.
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“They are somewhat powerless to solve the problem other than really staying active in their local communities, which they have done and always have done,” he said. “And that’s actually the only saving grace for that brand: the local connections that the wholesalers have. But it’s been a rough summer for those guys, you know, shout out to them, and it’s probably going to be a rough winter. We have never seen anything like this in the beer industry.”
If Dylan Mulvaney Didn’t Make You Stop Drinking Bud Light, Bill Gates Should pic.twitter.com/cOp1Udh72q
— Nikki (@NikkiC816) September 10, 2023
Related: New York Bar Shuts Down Bud Light After Waking Up in Viral Video
Mulvaney Partnership
This all started in April, when Mulvaney revealed that Bud Light had been sending her packages of Bud Light with the influencer’s face as a way to celebrate a full year of “girlhood.” Mulvaney even went so far as to describe the beer cans as her “most prized possession” on Instagram with a post with the hashtag “#budlightpartner.”
This immediately backfired on Bud Light as conservatives launched a boycott of the beer brand, which proved to be very effective. Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev reported that profits plummeted after the boycott, with U.S. sales falling 10.5% in the second quarter, while earnings before taxes, interest and depreciation fell 28.2%.
“Bud Light’s missteps felt like a betrayal to both liberal and conservative customers, and it will take months, if not years, to rebuild trust,” said Daniel Korschun, associate professor of marketing at the LeBow College of Business from Drexel University. told The New York Times.
My local bar finally gave up and permanently removed Bud Light from the bar completely. pic.twitter.com/8LjJK8M6Lu
— KEEM 🍿 (@KEEMSTAR) July 27, 2023
It’s safe to say that Bud Light learned the hard way that “wake up, go broke” is very real. Only time will tell if Bud Light will ever be able to recover from this.
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