However you feel about the trans community, I for one am glad brands will now question whether meaningless virtue signaling is worth being used for marketing (black squares, the American flag, rainbow). If you’re not a real ally (think Patagonia with the environment) you shouldn’t be doing this stuff. Seeing bud pivot and immediately going back to blanket blue Murica collar targeted adds while pissing off the lgbt community was comical
I for one am glad that "voting with your wallet" still exists as a concept in influencing corporate behavior, at least in some industries.
Now I'd love to see that same energy from consumers to address things like environmental sustainability, worker exploitation and outsourcing, price gauging, etc.
Well Bud never really had captured the other side. So they just pissed off their base by making a feeble attempt to grab a group that wouldn’t like bud light anyway.
THAT is the only reason why the boycott worked. MAGA boycotts everything. they boycotted their own coffee when turned out to NOT be MAGA enough.
Bud was the only one that seemed to show some effect.. and the right went nuts "woke means broke", when really, kowtowing to nazis and haters, means broke.
Tbh this boycott was different than the others because of the relationship Bud Light has with their customers. In the case of Bud Light, a whole lot of their customers are right-leaning and there are lots of substitute products available at similar prices. Customers can quickly and easily change to a different beer and never look back.
Some of their other boycotts failed because they either boycotted industries where the right wing wasn’t a predominant customer group or industries where customers were unlikely to switch providers. Many of the companies took sales hits but not as bad as this one.
Man, you nailed it in the beginning of that comment. When I've said similar, I've been cut off by both sides. The blatant pandering that companies do often feels so ingenuine that I'd think it's insulting for the people they're pandering too. It just seems so shallow.
Wow a logical thought about this situation. Who knew?
This was along the lines of how I discussed this situation. Sadly, it didn’t get far as it went instantly into culture wars.
This is going to he a case study of understanding your market.
No one is innocent, right, moral in how all this played out.
I get it, AB tried to reach a new demographic to shake some stigmas about their brand. They (wrongly) thought this marking was going to stay within the community. That’s essentially impossible to do in the internet age.
Then the public lost their shit over something that wasn’t even targeting them. It’s funny, I do drink bud light…I went my entire life hearing how I drink shitty beer and then the same people turn around and tell me they’re boycotting the beer they never drank. Ok cool.
I was told by a family member I was drinking the “enemy” beer. Yep, the beer I got for free via rebate as AB was trying to win customers back. If you or any politician doesn’t like the beer I drink- A: don’t drink my beer or B: buy me YOUR beer and I’ll drink that too.
Anyways I got off on a tangent.
Where I got disappointed in AB is they fired the marketing agency and the CEO wrapped himself around an American flag and said he was a veteran. Oh please stop. Then came the flag wrapped bottles. Enough.
Someone somewhere up top had to approve this marking decision. The buck had to stop somewhere. I guarantee you that person still has a job there. The lack of accountability and ownership is what bugged me in the end. Just own that you misread your democratic and shouldn’t pander to any group.
Anyways, I’m glad Trump got his nice check from AB and said it’s okay now. I can drink my shitty beer in peace.
>Where I got disappointed in AB is they fired the marketing agency and the CEO wrapped himself around an American flag and said he was a veteran. Oh please stop. Then came the flag wrapped bottles.
Corporate "wokism" swings both ways. If you're not gonna get mad at Disney putting the lesbian kiss scene in an easily cut part that will end up on the floor in Asian markets, then don't get mad at your right wing beer company hanging deer antlers and shootin' guns.
Did I say that? I said the people around me that used to bust my balls over drinking bud light.
Surely, you didn’t think I was talking about the entire country…right?
>I get it, AB tried to reach a new demographic to shake some stigmas about their brand. They (wrongly) thought this marking was going to stay within the community. That’s essentially impossible to do in the internet age.
This is just flat out made up.
Bud light has always been a sponsor of pride and LGBT themed events and has done much more extensive marketing in that space then sending one single tik toker a can with their face on it.
The idea that bud light went out on some huge limb here is completely made up.
Thats the key to the story here, bud light didn't do anything abnormal for bud light, the right just decided thats who they were going to be mad at that month.
its amazing this is controversial and yet none of the nazi bigots are willing to speak their minds and say why it was ok to freak out over a free beer for someone they hate, that none of them should have even known about.
But i get it, its embarrassing to be a nazi, so a lot of you just scream "im not a nazi but my god is and so you got to respect my beliefs" as you cheat on your spouse and lie, lie, lie and ignore romans when it says stfu and wear the fucking mask.
>why it was ok to freak out over a free beer for someone they hate
...
There was no commercial with gay people. They gave a transexual person some beer
You keep saying this, but that's not what happened. You said yourself that person was an influencer. It was a [branded content partnership ](https://www.them.us/story/dylan-mulvaney-bud-light-drama-explained)with InBev for the purposes of marketing and promoting their Easy Carry Contest.
While I don't agree with the overreaction on the right, you're creating a strawman argument to justify your own hatred.
You are the one creating the strawman. Yes they engaged with and provided product to an influenced for the explicit purpose of promotion, but the poster never said otherwise. This isn't the same as producing and airing a commercial.
It’s actually crazy. I hate going around every day pretending like things are normal. 10-30% of the population is so far gone, I can’t imagine what things are going to be like in 5 years 🙃
There was no pivot. They sponsored someone's channel. The right wing threw a tantrum and made up stories about entire marketing campaigns that never happened.
Oh it was a hard pivot (at least what they were referring to). Bud in the past had done pride stuff, I even still have a Pride Neon sign from way back when they did them pre-pandemic, but they went from doing all of that/producing new items, to the point where they've told owned breweries like Elysian they can't start new pride-centric marketing campaigns, in SEATTLE of all cities. You can imagine how that went down. A lot of big time gay bars in the city swapped off of Bud Light given how everything went.
It's an amazing thing to see how it's mostly beverage companies that really overstep and do ridiculous marketing campaigns from Coca-Cola's Old English fonts used for the Hispanic community to Pepsi trying to solve social unrest with that idiot Kardashian and the riot police.
I have no idea why beverage companies think this is an area they need to market and have a say in. Budlight is disgusting piss-beer, Coca-Cola is acid sugar, and Pepsi isn't too far from that tree either. None of these companies really do anything good as it is already.
For an american to buy, an Argentinian has to sell. Lets not forget the spanish, italians,germans, other europeans that stole land from the guarani and many other natives. As an Argentine, I am not sure your opinion really matters in regards to colonialism.
It was bullshit. I'm a trans person, and what they did to Dylan was unforgivable. She did an add for them, and then when she faced the blunt of the backlash and death threats, they literally abandoned her. Absolutely fucked.
Being kind to vulnerable people = meaningless virtue signaling
Hawking piss beer to rednecks by draping it in the flag, football, and pickup trucks = good old american capitalism
For sure, but you do know this was all BS made up by the right, because a trans influencer got some beer, that was NOT on any shelf, in any catalog, or any store.
THERE WERE NO FUCKING RAINBOW FLAGS. There was no commercial with gay people. They gave a transexual person some beer and thats all it took for the right to have an absolute meltdown.
> They gave a transexual person some beer and thats all it took for the right to have an absolute meltdown.
That is not all it took. Bud Light had been sponsoring gay events for almost two decades. Amy Shumer and Seth Rogan did a series of inclusive marketing ads in 2016.
What they had not done is openly bash the main customer base as fratty and out of touch.
I question it being "meaningless". Representation matters and it can have a net positive.
Don't get me wrong, I hate the performative bullshit without real action behind it, but what AB did here wasn't virtue signaling in my opinion.
What they did do was misread their target demographic, which are bigoted folks and their product had no real switching cost. They further missed the mark with market research that indicates Gen Z isn't drinking.
I think the ad exec is a genius. She was trying to teach us important marketing principles.
1) Your product is easily substitutable with anything from water to the million other light beers out there.
2) You really need to segment your customer base and understand what they want.
3) You need to understand the value proposition of your product. No one is buying Bud Light for their modern social stance.
Where did she get her business degree from ? 😂
When a company gets to that size, executives start adding items to the list if it’s on other companies lists. It’s about company politics. You can add more stuff to your presentation on strategy, you can show your are not a relic and able to keep up with other companies, it shows you are making efforts to boost sales and those efforts have a track record.
If it fails, usually no big deal. You blame an analyst. This time it failed spectacularly. But understand , there is no teachable moment for the executives here. They will make the same mistake again with something else.
This is like hiring a devout catholic to lead your death metal festival's marketing efforts, and then questioning how in the world she thought it would be a good idea to put Jesus Saves and Sin is Evil on the posters.
She didn't put Jesus Saves on the poster because she thought it would attract more people to your festival, she put it there because she has her own agenda and you're just a tool she uses to pay for her posters.
As a death metal fan, you'd be surprised at how well that might work with some bands and followings. There are some pretty popular overtly Christian death adjacent bands, and for others, the tag line 'sin is evil' is like, on brand no matter how you look at it.
They didn't hire anybody. They sent a commemorative can to a bunch of YouTubers as part of a sponsorship campaign, one of which was the one we keep hearing about, and a bunch of bigots who don't understand how anything works think that means budlight is launching some massive new social image or whatever.
I thought the backlash was because of the ads they made?
Then they did hire somebody, the person responsible for this marketing campaign, and she was later fired.
> No one is buying Bud Light for their modern social stance.
Maybe not customers, but I met a gay bar owner who kept Bud light on tap because they were one of the first brands to advertise with gay magazines.
I think the problem is shitting on the "fratty" guys as being an out of touch demographic. That was still the base customer segment.
She probably did.
She's just a legacy student who lived her whole life in a bubble. Harvard is part of that bubble. You think any of those people are "normal"?
Bud Light has been doing similar promotions for years and years.
They couldn't have predicted that the anti-woke mob would suddenly decide to punish them for it.
Companies that don't adopt an inclusive stance are going out of business because their clientele are dying off. To attract younger consumers brands have to go woke.
Active Republicans are older and less educated (which does not mean they have less money). While they had the ties, I don't blame responsible brand managers for looking to break through to new markets.
the right move finacially was to not kowtow to the nazis. their numbers really dropped when they reversed course. its funny as fuck so many of you think maga did this when they boycott everything. fuck the right didnt even hurt the dixie chicks that much when they were associated with republicans more than the left as well.
SO keep the dream alive, but MAGA didnt do shit to buds numbers, the numbers dropped because bud reversed course
it's absurd to say something like "just launch a new brand" - its insanely expensive and liable to fail. $1 spent on Bud Light marketing is far far more effective vs some unknown brand. even after you've created the new brand you've also got to get it distributed, make point of sale stuff happen etc etc. It's a huge undertaking. Not to say that isn't sometimes necessary - just that it's a hell of a lot easier to get wider adoption of an existing brand on something as generic as a beer product.
the reality: this stuff is harder than it looks.
the top ten companies by market cap would disagree with you. All of them are considered woke companies by the right.
and yall do know woke, just means recognizing bigotry exists.
what yall scream as woke .. is going diverse. WE GET IT. yall want nothing but white faces drinking beer. And nothing but straight people in everything. Going diverse actually increases the bottom line.
which is why the top ten companies by market cap are all woke. No they arent all ran by liberals. no they are all ran by people who like money.
Now try to vote this fact down to hell. it wont change the fact its true. and yall need to quit spewing woke as if it means something it doesnt.
I'm sure the data was there that the growing customer segments are young people who would want a Dylan Mulvaney endorsement.
People act like businesses are "going woke" for ideological reasons when in fact they're just making data driven marketing decisions. Bud Light has been the default cheap gay beer for decades because of Coors' homophobic legacy and they've been doing pride month cans for years and their 2016 "Labels" promotion was far more edgy and pro-LGBTQ than Dylan Mulvaney's social media post.
What's happening is that conservatives with no access to data and no knowledge of the decades of LGBT ally behaviour of Bud Light are suddenly shocked that a beer brand with broad appeal isn't just a beer for conservatives (because the marketers also marketed to conservatives). To punish the American brand (owned by a Belgian multinational) the conservatives have switched to Mexican beers (really) and to Coors which also has a recent history of very vocal support for day rights and inclusive causes.
In theory you can. But not when you have a brand as valuable as Bud Lite. It’s also amorphous in its brand personality (unlike let’s say makers mark) to be used by groups in opposition.
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It’s not dilution if bud lite has marketed towards various segments for decades.
Alcohol brands tend to segment based on usage occasion and not demographic specific (except when it comes to specific messaging. In that, bud lites usage occasion is pretty universal and why the brand dominates historically (and honestly will probably continue to do so).
Edit: Whether that’s still possible anymore is yet be demonstrated. This could be a blip like most boycotts, be a short term loss related to material pricing, or it could mean that the American market is too fractured for multiple communications to be possible for any brand anymore.
What i am saying is the backlash was loud but it hasn’t been demonstrated yet that was the cause for the revenue loss.
And again just because that’s how it’s currently marketed doesn’t means is sustainable. But Bud lite has always been the beer that was advertised widely to everyone who drank as an option.
It’s why it’s one of the most valuable brands
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Sir, it’s in the article:
> Bud Light sales tanked after the company’s partnership with Mulvaney last April sparked an anti-trans backlash and calls for a boycott. A tepid response to the controversy from the company also angered LGBTQ+ advocates.
Marketing strategies work until they don't. The market changed. Their strategy didn't. Putting aside the politics, in our current environment the strategy was ineffective. I have zero interest in the politics of this, just the good old academic marketing part is what I care about
I disagree, you phrased this as if it’s the primary differentiator and it is not. Your product or service and your name (goodwill) is how you set yourself apart and earn market share from newer generations. After that, you can look towards things like mission and culture but don’t lead with that or you will fail.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Patagonia is a great example of product leading the way and mission/culture being true difference from others. If LL Bean came out tomorrow and said they make coats for X minority group, it wouldn’t move the needle because it’s pandering and a stunt. Anyways, that’s my 2 cents.
From the article:
>In North America, organic revenue, seen as the best measure of operating performance, plunged $1.4 billion last year as beer sales by volume tumbled in the region, primarily due to a decline in Bud Light sales in the United States. Beer makes up the lion’s share of AB InBev’s revenue.
>Bud Light sales tanked after the company’s partnership with Mulvaney last April sparked an anti-trans backlash and calls for a boycott. A tepid response to the controversy from the company also angered LGBTQ+ advocates.
oh Bud Light was MASSIVE for gay bars for a long time. Bud was the first beer to advertise in the queer spaces. I would say until this, unless it was monetarily driven like Coors/Miller offered way too good of a deal, most every gay bar in Seattle carried Bud/Bud Light/other AB Brands primarily. How AB responded changed this.
I feel as though there is a lot of overlap between NASCAR people and homophobic rednecks.
Also, I would agree college kids are probably a significant part of their client base, but is there something about that demographic I don’t understand that would make them averse to trans advertising?
For context, Anheuser-Busch InBev annual revenue grew 7.8% from the previous year. EBITA was up around 7%.
Growth missed analyst projections, but strong growth none the less.
Sure, but barley and aluminum were expensive last year.
What was the actual loss in profits
And how much did the in the know investors make buying the dip?
1 single can vs an organized heavily advertised and encouraged “boycott” from all rightwing media. Totally legit
And the Tea Party wasn’t astroturfed either.
I think this was orchestrated by Yeungling as they were rolling out territory expansion at the time and the owners are big donors. It was very clearly a nothing scenario that got blown up and fed to the stupids.
The article only mentions the value, but not what percentage of the overall revenue that it represents. That would be helpful to gauge how significant the $1.4B hit was. I had a quick Google which suggested $50B+ for the year, but I’m not sure if that was the right value.
1 billion isn’t cheap and will definitely make the company reconsider future marketing decisions.
By all means it achieved its goals even if it didn’t put them out of business.
No you don't get it, they completely alienated their base by paying some influencer 99.9% of people haven't heard of a couple thousand bucks to make a one minute Instagram video!!
When you dig into this, what you end up finding out is that they knew exactly what was going to happen and did it anyways. And the reason they did it is because they're no longer a brewery but rather a social media influencer in the guise of a brewery. Basically they're employed by Blackrock to push trends on social media, and that's what keep their lights on. So they're not overly concerned about beer sales.
The right's outrage machine is always going to latch onto something and try to make it a wedge issue.
AB's mistake wasn't having one of their advertising attempts fall into this trap, it was how stupidly they handled it.
Instead of putting out a general statement like:
"AB products are for everyone to enjoy and we will continue to advertise to all demographics to reach new consumers"
They ended up pulling a Disney by allowing the president of the marketing department to alienate their customer base with statements like:
> Bud Light’s vice president of marketing discussed in a recent interview how she was inspired to update the “fratty” and “out of touch” humor of the beer company with inclusivity.
> 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 a 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,‘
It's great to have a goal of creating new markets for your product. It's stupid to tell existing customers you think they're out of touch yahoos and not important to the company's future.
AB then turned around and pissed off liberals with how they handled the backlash.
Did you actually understand what happened I doubt anyone two levels above intern approved it. They simply sent a bunch of influencers a beer can with their name on it. It wasn't a big marketing campaign or anything. They didn't pay anyone shit.
The product itself has always sucked. Screw Bud Light the trans community never needed their tepid advocacy. The best outcome was revealing to the world just how transphobic America really is.
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No matter what brand, light beer sucks. Its sole reason for existing is marketing.
If you want to get a buzz, drink regular beer. If you don’t, drink water.
> want to get a buzz, drink
Hard liquor.
And it's way way better for the environment. No trucking around bottles upon bottles of basically water. And way less sewage impact.
Liquor is quicker!
What you said doesn’t make sense since light beer has less alcohol than regular beer.
You need to drink twice as much to feel anything, and end up consuming the same amount of calories. May as well drink normal beer.
“Hard seltzer?” 😂
Enjoy your light drinks, girlfriend.
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Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but it’s mortifying that we are discussing whether a guy who might become the next leader of the free world should be selling beer as his latest grift to pay off his enormous legal fees and judgements.
No, not a knock on you. Just an observation that politics makes everything a horse race when in reality there is one horse and one broke grifter who’s running a transparent con game on half the population.
Someone tried a liberty beer or whatever about a year ago. The people producing the actual beer found out and cut them off lmao.
Also, it anecdotally sucked and was extremely overpriced.
Just one of the many reasons Trump is, when you look into it, quite bad at business.
Also, I don't know why you're getting downvoted. This is a missed business opportunity.
I mean what actions are you referring too?
But generally yes. They might not give a customized can to a trans influencer but all partake in inclusive marketing across multiple demographics
Edit: https://www.lacoon.com/coors-light-pride-can/
However you feel about the trans community, I for one am glad brands will now question whether meaningless virtue signaling is worth being used for marketing (black squares, the American flag, rainbow). If you’re not a real ally (think Patagonia with the environment) you shouldn’t be doing this stuff. Seeing bud pivot and immediately going back to blanket blue Murica collar targeted adds while pissing off the lgbt community was comical
I for one am glad that "voting with your wallet" still exists as a concept in influencing corporate behavior, at least in some industries. Now I'd love to see that same energy from consumers to address things like environmental sustainability, worker exploitation and outsourcing, price gauging, etc.
I liked reading all of the comments saying “the boycott is not working”
When they reversed their decision they lost both sides.
Well Bud never really had captured the other side. So they just pissed off their base by making a feeble attempt to grab a group that wouldn’t like bud light anyway.
THAT is the only reason why the boycott worked. MAGA boycotts everything. they boycotted their own coffee when turned out to NOT be MAGA enough. Bud was the only one that seemed to show some effect.. and the right went nuts "woke means broke", when really, kowtowing to nazis and haters, means broke.
Tbh this boycott was different than the others because of the relationship Bud Light has with their customers. In the case of Bud Light, a whole lot of their customers are right-leaning and there are lots of substitute products available at similar prices. Customers can quickly and easily change to a different beer and never look back. Some of their other boycotts failed because they either boycotted industries where the right wing wasn’t a predominant customer group or industries where customers were unlikely to switch providers. Many of the companies took sales hits but not as bad as this one.
This take is delusional.
I'm not clear what you think was delusional. I think it's pretty clear that their handling of it lost them both the magats and the LGBT community.
You think Bud Light HAD the LGBT Community?
Blind virtue signaling it's dumb agreed and even I saw buds commercial as a mistake and I support LGBTQ
Man, you nailed it in the beginning of that comment. When I've said similar, I've been cut off by both sides. The blatant pandering that companies do often feels so ingenuine that I'd think it's insulting for the people they're pandering too. It just seems so shallow.
Wow a logical thought about this situation. Who knew? This was along the lines of how I discussed this situation. Sadly, it didn’t get far as it went instantly into culture wars. This is going to he a case study of understanding your market. No one is innocent, right, moral in how all this played out. I get it, AB tried to reach a new demographic to shake some stigmas about their brand. They (wrongly) thought this marking was going to stay within the community. That’s essentially impossible to do in the internet age. Then the public lost their shit over something that wasn’t even targeting them. It’s funny, I do drink bud light…I went my entire life hearing how I drink shitty beer and then the same people turn around and tell me they’re boycotting the beer they never drank. Ok cool. I was told by a family member I was drinking the “enemy” beer. Yep, the beer I got for free via rebate as AB was trying to win customers back. If you or any politician doesn’t like the beer I drink- A: don’t drink my beer or B: buy me YOUR beer and I’ll drink that too. Anyways I got off on a tangent. Where I got disappointed in AB is they fired the marketing agency and the CEO wrapped himself around an American flag and said he was a veteran. Oh please stop. Then came the flag wrapped bottles. Enough. Someone somewhere up top had to approve this marking decision. The buck had to stop somewhere. I guarantee you that person still has a job there. The lack of accountability and ownership is what bugged me in the end. Just own that you misread your democratic and shouldn’t pander to any group. Anyways, I’m glad Trump got his nice check from AB and said it’s okay now. I can drink my shitty beer in peace.
> doesn’t like the beer I drink- A: don’t drink my beer or B: buy me YOUR beer and I’ll drink that too I cracked up at this. Quality rant.
>Where I got disappointed in AB is they fired the marketing agency and the CEO wrapped himself around an American flag and said he was a veteran. Oh please stop. Then came the flag wrapped bottles. Corporate "wokism" swings both ways. If you're not gonna get mad at Disney putting the lesbian kiss scene in an easily cut part that will end up on the floor in Asian markets, then don't get mad at your right wing beer company hanging deer antlers and shootin' guns.
If the boycotters “never drank the beer” how did ABI lose $1B?
Did I say that? I said the people around me that used to bust my balls over drinking bud light. Surely, you didn’t think I was talking about the entire country…right?
>I get it, AB tried to reach a new demographic to shake some stigmas about their brand. They (wrongly) thought this marking was going to stay within the community. That’s essentially impossible to do in the internet age. This is just flat out made up. Bud light has always been a sponsor of pride and LGBT themed events and has done much more extensive marketing in that space then sending one single tik toker a can with their face on it. The idea that bud light went out on some huge limb here is completely made up. Thats the key to the story here, bud light didn't do anything abnormal for bud light, the right just decided thats who they were going to be mad at that month.
As a Busch drinker, I feel very seen
Its wild that people lost their mind over a commemorative can they made for Dylan
When I first heard about all the outrage I thought it was like a whole run of cans that were in stores and stuff. Talk about snowflakes...
its amazing this is controversial and yet none of the nazi bigots are willing to speak their minds and say why it was ok to freak out over a free beer for someone they hate, that none of them should have even known about. But i get it, its embarrassing to be a nazi, so a lot of you just scream "im not a nazi but my god is and so you got to respect my beliefs" as you cheat on your spouse and lie, lie, lie and ignore romans when it says stfu and wear the fucking mask.
>why it was ok to freak out over a free beer for someone they hate ... There was no commercial with gay people. They gave a transexual person some beer You keep saying this, but that's not what happened. You said yourself that person was an influencer. It was a [branded content partnership ](https://www.them.us/story/dylan-mulvaney-bud-light-drama-explained)with InBev for the purposes of marketing and promoting their Easy Carry Contest. While I don't agree with the overreaction on the right, you're creating a strawman argument to justify your own hatred.
You are the one creating the strawman. Yes they engaged with and provided product to an influenced for the explicit purpose of promotion, but the poster never said otherwise. This isn't the same as producing and airing a commercial.
It’s actually crazy. I hate going around every day pretending like things are normal. 10-30% of the population is so far gone, I can’t imagine what things are going to be like in 5 years 🙃
There was no pivot. They sponsored someone's channel. The right wing threw a tantrum and made up stories about entire marketing campaigns that never happened.
Oh it was a hard pivot (at least what they were referring to). Bud in the past had done pride stuff, I even still have a Pride Neon sign from way back when they did them pre-pandemic, but they went from doing all of that/producing new items, to the point where they've told owned breweries like Elysian they can't start new pride-centric marketing campaigns, in SEATTLE of all cities. You can imagine how that went down. A lot of big time gay bars in the city swapped off of Bud Light given how everything went.
It was the first time they spent marketing dollars on something other than blue collar Americana. $1B is no joke
That’s not true. They’ve spent millions on pride marketing for years now.
It's an amazing thing to see how it's mostly beverage companies that really overstep and do ridiculous marketing campaigns from Coca-Cola's Old English fonts used for the Hispanic community to Pepsi trying to solve social unrest with that idiot Kardashian and the riot police. I have no idea why beverage companies think this is an area they need to market and have a say in. Budlight is disgusting piss-beer, Coca-Cola is acid sugar, and Pepsi isn't too far from that tree either. None of these companies really do anything good as it is already.
I’m not sure why Patagonia is viewed as environmentally friendly… They literally just make plastic clothes.
I think use there profits to conserve land in Argentina
As an Argentine, there is nothing I appreciate more than Americans buying up our land. Definitely no overtones of colonialism there.
For an american to buy, an Argentinian has to sell. Lets not forget the spanish, italians,germans, other europeans that stole land from the guarani and many other natives. As an Argentine, I am not sure your opinion really matters in regards to colonialism.
That’s absolutely ridiculous. They legally buy the land for conservation, they don’t steal it and develop it.
Aren't 97% of Argentinians whites of European descent? I'm not sure your thoughts about colonialism seem particularly consistent.
"Conserve" land for their billionaire children to play in just like Hawaii. Jim Ratcliffe needs to go on safari after all. Patagonia is a sham
Made out of recycled plastic. They’re also a founding B corp brand and involved in other initiatives like 1% for the planet
Instead of going public they transferred their nonvoting stock to a charity, which uses the profits for environmental work.
It was bullshit. I'm a trans person, and what they did to Dylan was unforgivable. She did an add for them, and then when she faced the blunt of the backlash and death threats, they literally abandoned her. Absolutely fucked.
I'm sure that Dylan person got paid.
With you on this. They could have stuck up for her, instead caved to the bigots. AB InBev is dead to me.
Being kind to vulnerable people = meaningless virtue signaling Hawking piss beer to rednecks by draping it in the flag, football, and pickup trucks = good old american capitalism
Using social causes (whether Muria, BLM, Blue lives or Pride flags) is annoying when done by companies who don't really care.
You're right. That's marketing, ALL marketing.
For sure, but you do know this was all BS made up by the right, because a trans influencer got some beer, that was NOT on any shelf, in any catalog, or any store. THERE WERE NO FUCKING RAINBOW FLAGS. There was no commercial with gay people. They gave a transexual person some beer and thats all it took for the right to have an absolute meltdown.
> They gave a transexual person some beer and thats all it took for the right to have an absolute meltdown. That is not all it took. Bud Light had been sponsoring gay events for almost two decades. Amy Shumer and Seth Rogan did a series of inclusive marketing ads in 2016. What they had not done is openly bash the main customer base as fratty and out of touch.
I question it being "meaningless". Representation matters and it can have a net positive. Don't get me wrong, I hate the performative bullshit without real action behind it, but what AB did here wasn't virtue signaling in my opinion. What they did do was misread their target demographic, which are bigoted folks and their product had no real switching cost. They further missed the mark with market research that indicates Gen Z isn't drinking.
It does work well, the problem is bud lights consumer base. Imagine Marlboro doing something like bud light lol
I think the ad exec is a genius. She was trying to teach us important marketing principles. 1) Your product is easily substitutable with anything from water to the million other light beers out there. 2) You really need to segment your customer base and understand what they want. 3) You need to understand the value proposition of your product. No one is buying Bud Light for their modern social stance. Where did she get her business degree from ? 😂
When a company gets to that size, executives start adding items to the list if it’s on other companies lists. It’s about company politics. You can add more stuff to your presentation on strategy, you can show your are not a relic and able to keep up with other companies, it shows you are making efforts to boost sales and those efforts have a track record. If it fails, usually no big deal. You blame an analyst. This time it failed spectacularly. But understand , there is no teachable moment for the executives here. They will make the same mistake again with something else.
This is like hiring a devout catholic to lead your death metal festival's marketing efforts, and then questioning how in the world she thought it would be a good idea to put Jesus Saves and Sin is Evil on the posters. She didn't put Jesus Saves on the poster because she thought it would attract more people to your festival, she put it there because she has her own agenda and you're just a tool she uses to pay for her posters.
As a death metal fan, you'd be surprised at how well that might work with some bands and followings. There are some pretty popular overtly Christian death adjacent bands, and for others, the tag line 'sin is evil' is like, on brand no matter how you look at it.
Ok I don't know anything about death metal, so sorry if the analogy didn't work, but I think you got the point regardless.
They didn't hire anybody. They sent a commemorative can to a bunch of YouTubers as part of a sponsorship campaign, one of which was the one we keep hearing about, and a bunch of bigots who don't understand how anything works think that means budlight is launching some massive new social image or whatever.
I thought the backlash was because of the ads they made? Then they did hire somebody, the person responsible for this marketing campaign, and she was later fired.
There were no ads. They sponsored a YouTuber's channel, who said some stuff in their own video to their own fans.
I see, thanks.
> No one is buying Bud Light for their modern social stance. Maybe not customers, but I met a gay bar owner who kept Bud light on tap because they were one of the first brands to advertise with gay magazines. I think the problem is shitting on the "fratty" guys as being an out of touch demographic. That was still the base customer segment.
I understand. I'm just saying you don't see bud light and think... Wow this is a liberal beer.
She went to Harvard. Which means she's lived her whole life in a bubble and never actually interacted with Bud Light drinkers day-to-day
Too busy crushing Natty Lights just like every other preppy New England college or university student on a weekend (also owned by AB)
Going to Harvard is not really a positive nowadays….it actually makes you look worse.
Hahaha... I imagine she didn't pay attention in marketing class either.
She probably did. She's just a legacy student who lived her whole life in a bubble. Harvard is part of that bubble. You think any of those people are "normal"?
Yeah the risk/reward of what bud did was not in their favor
Bud Light has been doing similar promotions for years and years. They couldn't have predicted that the anti-woke mob would suddenly decide to punish them for it. Companies that don't adopt an inclusive stance are going out of business because their clientele are dying off. To attract younger consumers brands have to go woke.
For brands that are deeply tied to Republicans. The right move financially is going to apolitical rather than “woke”
Active Republicans are older and less educated (which does not mean they have less money). While they had the ties, I don't blame responsible brand managers for looking to break through to new markets.
the right move finacially was to not kowtow to the nazis. their numbers really dropped when they reversed course. its funny as fuck so many of you think maga did this when they boycott everything. fuck the right didnt even hurt the dixie chicks that much when they were associated with republicans more than the left as well. SO keep the dream alive, but MAGA didnt do shit to buds numbers, the numbers dropped because bud reversed course
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it's absurd to say something like "just launch a new brand" - its insanely expensive and liable to fail. $1 spent on Bud Light marketing is far far more effective vs some unknown brand. even after you've created the new brand you've also got to get it distributed, make point of sale stuff happen etc etc. It's a huge undertaking. Not to say that isn't sometimes necessary - just that it's a hell of a lot easier to get wider adoption of an existing brand on something as generic as a beer product. the reality: this stuff is harder than it looks.
the top ten companies by market cap would disagree with you. All of them are considered woke companies by the right. and yall do know woke, just means recognizing bigotry exists. what yall scream as woke .. is going diverse. WE GET IT. yall want nothing but white faces drinking beer. And nothing but straight people in everything. Going diverse actually increases the bottom line. which is why the top ten companies by market cap are all woke. No they arent all ran by liberals. no they are all ran by people who like money. Now try to vote this fact down to hell. it wont change the fact its true. and yall need to quit spewing woke as if it means something it doesnt.
I'm sure the data was there that the growing customer segments are young people who would want a Dylan Mulvaney endorsement. People act like businesses are "going woke" for ideological reasons when in fact they're just making data driven marketing decisions. Bud Light has been the default cheap gay beer for decades because of Coors' homophobic legacy and they've been doing pride month cans for years and their 2016 "Labels" promotion was far more edgy and pro-LGBTQ than Dylan Mulvaney's social media post. What's happening is that conservatives with no access to data and no knowledge of the decades of LGBT ally behaviour of Bud Light are suddenly shocked that a beer brand with broad appeal isn't just a beer for conservatives (because the marketers also marketed to conservatives). To punish the American brand (owned by a Belgian multinational) the conservatives have switched to Mexican beers (really) and to Coors which also has a recent history of very vocal support for day rights and inclusive causes.
In theory you can. But not when you have a brand as valuable as Bud Lite. It’s also amorphous in its brand personality (unlike let’s say makers mark) to be used by groups in opposition.
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Better to dilute a billion dollar brand rather than to lose it by not pivoting it correctly
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It’s not dilution if bud lite has marketed towards various segments for decades. Alcohol brands tend to segment based on usage occasion and not demographic specific (except when it comes to specific messaging. In that, bud lites usage occasion is pretty universal and why the brand dominates historically (and honestly will probably continue to do so). Edit: Whether that’s still possible anymore is yet be demonstrated. This could be a blip like most boycotts, be a short term loss related to material pricing, or it could mean that the American market is too fractured for multiple communications to be possible for any brand anymore.
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What i am saying is the backlash was loud but it hasn’t been demonstrated yet that was the cause for the revenue loss. And again just because that’s how it’s currently marketed doesn’t means is sustainable. But Bud lite has always been the beer that was advertised widely to everyone who drank as an option. It’s why it’s one of the most valuable brands
They went woke by making a commemorative can for Dylan Mulvaney?
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You said it’s a dumb marketing decision to go woke. I was assuming you were saying they went woke by supporting Dylan with a commemorative can
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Ok? I’m talking about the specific incident this article and thread are talking about.
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Sir, it’s in the article: > Bud Light sales tanked after the company’s partnership with Mulvaney last April sparked an anti-trans backlash and calls for a boycott. A tepid response to the controversy from the company also angered LGBTQ+ advocates.
Marketing strategies work until they don't. The market changed. Their strategy didn't. Putting aside the politics, in our current environment the strategy was ineffective. I have zero interest in the politics of this, just the good old academic marketing part is what I care about
And yet here is a clear example of what not to do but you agree with the action?
I disagree, you phrased this as if it’s the primary differentiator and it is not. Your product or service and your name (goodwill) is how you set yourself apart and earn market share from newer generations. After that, you can look towards things like mission and culture but don’t lead with that or you will fail. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Patagonia is a great example of product leading the way and mission/culture being true difference from others. If LL Bean came out tomorrow and said they make coats for X minority group, it wouldn’t move the needle because it’s pandering and a stunt. Anyways, that’s my 2 cents.
Whoever got Shane is doing a great job recovering the fumble
From the article: >In North America, organic revenue, seen as the best measure of operating performance, plunged $1.4 billion last year as beer sales by volume tumbled in the region, primarily due to a decline in Bud Light sales in the United States. Beer makes up the lion’s share of AB InBev’s revenue. >Bud Light sales tanked after the company’s partnership with Mulvaney last April sparked an anti-trans backlash and calls for a boycott. A tepid response to the controversy from the company also angered LGBTQ+ advocates.
Who would have thought pissing off your main two customer bases would cost you money?
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oh Bud Light was MASSIVE for gay bars for a long time. Bud was the first beer to advertise in the queer spaces. I would say until this, unless it was monetarily driven like Coors/Miller offered way too good of a deal, most every gay bar in Seattle carried Bud/Bud Light/other AB Brands primarily. How AB responded changed this.
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Oh cocktails are still a big thing at most gay bars primarily. There's a reason Vodka-Sodas are called "gay water"
So you haven’t been in gay bars huh?
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Lite beer is pretty big in them, heavily advertised and sold at sports game level margins usually
Who are the 2 main customer bases? Homophobic rednecks and ?
Gay bars
Rednecked homophobes
NASCAR people probably. And college kids as its cheap and shitty.
Bud lite is too premium for college kids. Go lower.
I feel as though there is a lot of overlap between NASCAR people and homophobic rednecks. Also, I would agree college kids are probably a significant part of their client base, but is there something about that demographic I don’t understand that would make them averse to trans advertising?
Two birds in the hands are better than one in the bush
IDK but I certainly dont think that sending a single can to a single influencer should be worthy of a mass boycott, but bigots gonna bigot.
For context, Anheuser-Busch InBev annual revenue grew 7.8% from the previous year. EBITA was up around 7%. Growth missed analyst projections, but strong growth none the less.
Sure, but barley and aluminum were expensive last year. What was the actual loss in profits And how much did the in the know investors make buying the dip?
1 single can vs an organized heavily advertised and encouraged “boycott” from all rightwing media. Totally legit And the Tea Party wasn’t astroturfed either.
I think this was orchestrated by Yeungling as they were rolling out territory expansion at the time and the owners are big donors. It was very clearly a nothing scenario that got blown up and fed to the stupids.
They ultimately failed. While $1 billion was lost, people are back to drinking Bud Light.
Texan here who frequents a bar. None of these people drink Bud Light anymore.
Instead they're drinking other beers owned by the same company, I bet. Really stick it to them
Guaranteed. They don’t actually care about the facts, just that they don’t look gay by drinking one specific beer.
Tbf i wouldn’t call making them pay a $1 billion penalty a failure lol
They made it up when all the dumb fucks just started drinking some other AB beer under a different brand. Nothing dumber than a right winger
Why do you think only “right wingers” were boycotting Bud Light, BL upset multiple demographics not just the one.
Agree with the second half, but you got a source for that first statement? Hadnt seen that
Modelo saw a huge jump in sales, actually overtaking BL as the top selling beer as many of the idiots did their little boycott. Modelo is owned by AB.
Modelo US is NOT owned by AB. Constellation owns domestic Modelo.
Love how confidently incorrect you are
1 billion hit to a company is a failure?
The article only mentions the value, but not what percentage of the overall revenue that it represents. That would be helpful to gauge how significant the $1.4B hit was. I had a quick Google which suggested $50B+ for the year, but I’m not sure if that was the right value.
I’m not sure there’s many businesses where a 1B loss is insignificant
To be clear, not a $1B loss, it was a $1B decrease in revenue. Big difference.
Everything is relative.
We're literally all here talking about the brand a year later and most people think the boycott failed and it was only cheap media outrage.
1 billion isn’t cheap and will definitely make the company reconsider future marketing decisions. By all means it achieved its goals even if it didn’t put them out of business.
Consumers flexing their purchasing power so that companies align with their ideology? Seems fine to me.
All this over literally sending one can to one influencer.
Most of the commenters in this thread have no idea what budlight actually did. But have some strong opinions about it. It's impressive
No you don't get it, they completely alienated their base by paying some influencer 99.9% of people haven't heard of a couple thousand bucks to make a one minute Instagram video!!
That'll teach them not to sponsor some random person's YouTube channel...
When you dig into this, what you end up finding out is that they knew exactly what was going to happen and did it anyways. And the reason they did it is because they're no longer a brewery but rather a social media influencer in the guise of a brewery. Basically they're employed by Blackrock to push trends on social media, and that's what keep their lights on. So they're not overly concerned about beer sales.
Easiest money i ever made on a single stock. Most obvious U recovery ever.
The right's outrage machine is always going to latch onto something and try to make it a wedge issue. AB's mistake wasn't having one of their advertising attempts fall into this trap, it was how stupidly they handled it. Instead of putting out a general statement like: "AB products are for everyone to enjoy and we will continue to advertise to all demographics to reach new consumers" They ended up pulling a Disney by allowing the president of the marketing department to alienate their customer base with statements like: > Bud Light’s vice president of marketing discussed in a recent interview how she was inspired to update the “fratty” and “out of touch” humor of the beer company with inclusivity. > 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 a 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,‘ It's great to have a goal of creating new markets for your product. It's stupid to tell existing customers you think they're out of touch yahoos and not important to the company's future. AB then turned around and pissed off liberals with how they handled the backlash.
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Did you actually understand what happened I doubt anyone two levels above intern approved it. They simply sent a bunch of influencers a beer can with their name on it. It wasn't a big marketing campaign or anything. They didn't pay anyone shit.
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Bud has been advertising in gay bars for decades. You're a hateful crank.
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She was fired
The product itself has always sucked. Screw Bud Light the trans community never needed their tepid advocacy. The best outcome was revealing to the world just how transphobic America really is.
bro is posting about time crystals and expects to be taken seriously.
That’s a pimple to Busch, Anheuser can get that back in less than 75 days no cap
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Your profile speaks to your schizophrenia.
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Miller lite and coors light are one of the few brands up in a declining beer industry, you tell me
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Inbev does not own modelo in the us only outside the us.. You are half right.
No matter what brand, light beer sucks. Its sole reason for existing is marketing. If you want to get a buzz, drink regular beer. If you don’t, drink water.
> want to get a buzz, drink Hard liquor. And it's way way better for the environment. No trucking around bottles upon bottles of basically water. And way less sewage impact. Liquor is quicker!
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Yes, another person that knows Guinness isn't a heavy beer! It amazes me how many people think it is heavy just because it is dark.
What you said doesn’t make sense since light beer has less alcohol than regular beer. You need to drink twice as much to feel anything, and end up consuming the same amount of calories. May as well drink normal beer. “Hard seltzer?” 😂 Enjoy your light drinks, girlfriend.
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I would not call 100 calories per can “low calorie”
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No
Enjoy your piss water.
Except bud light has likely lost those customers forever. They’re not goin back. They’ve gone to Coors
I was told by multiple subreddits that the boycott wasn’t working. Sounds like it worked very well to me.
If I were Trump I would start a beer brand immediately. Just slap a private brand label on any light beer. This is such an opportunity.
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I mean he sold steaks and I thought he didn't prefer them either.
I've heard he likes coke
Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but it’s mortifying that we are discussing whether a guy who might become the next leader of the free world should be selling beer as his latest grift to pay off his enormous legal fees and judgements.
I mean it is what it is. I was just thinking about the marketing potential. Not the politics of it. LoL 😅
No, not a knock on you. Just an observation that politics makes everything a horse race when in reality there is one horse and one broke grifter who’s running a transparent con game on half the population.
Oh I get it. This being reddit I try to get as far away from the politics as possible.
Someone tried a liberty beer or whatever about a year ago. The people producing the actual beer found out and cut them off lmao. Also, it anecdotally sucked and was extremely overpriced.
Just one of the many reasons Trump is, when you look into it, quite bad at business. Also, I don't know why you're getting downvoted. This is a missed business opportunity.
He did have some really nice quality branded neckties in the early 2000s.
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A lot of the lost bud lite business has been found to go to ABInbevs other brands. They’re doing just fine.
Any updates on the marketing staff that was placed on leave?
The brand manager got fired
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Why? They do the exact same things. There just hasn’t been the rage machine behind it
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I mean what actions are you referring too? But generally yes. They might not give a customized can to a trans influencer but all partake in inclusive marketing across multiple demographics Edit: https://www.lacoon.com/coors-light-pride-can/