Bud Light collab with Dylan Mulvaney dubbed a 'massive' misfire by LGBT honcho
Bud Light “massively” misfired when the beer brand partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, an LGBTQ group head admitted as sales of the brew plummet following backlash over the controversial collaboration.
Stacy Lentz, CEO of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, said that Anheuser-Busch badly botched the marketing gimmick with the TikTok star in a failed attempt to appeal to aspiring drinkers.
“They were going after the younger generation,” said Stacy Lentz, CEO of the LGBTQ nonprofit Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative.
“But that’s a really hard thing to do on a marketing level, to be all things to all people.
“And it failed massively.”
Even one former execs said the company “lost track of the consumer” as sales of the low-calorie brew were down 17% in the week ending April 15 compared to last year.
“When you have these large corporations that have a historic brand identity, it just looks inauthentic when they’re all of a sudden getting involved in these social campaigns,” Anson Frericks, who headed up the brewer’s US operations until last year, told the New York Times.
Beer Marketer’s Insight editor Benj Steinman said the beer company “stepped into a polarized America.”
Dylan Mulvaney’s Bud Light campaign has received lots of backlash. Instagram
An LGBTQ group head admitted as sales of the brew plummet following backlash over the controversial collaboration. Budweiser
“They’re in the center of the culture wars in a way that no company could possibly want to be,” Steinman said.
Mulvaney posted a video of herself holding a can of Bud Light with her face on it after Anheuser-Busch had sent it to her as part of a March Madness promotion.
The backlash was swift, including calls for a boycott and a video of musician Kid Rock shooting beer cans with an assault rifle.
Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, and her boss Daniel Blake have since gone on leave, with sources telling The Wall Street Journal that the temporary departures are not voluntary.
Alissa Heinerscheid, who served as Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, is currently on leave. Anheuser-Busch
One former exec said the company “lost track of the consumer” as sales of the low-calorie brew were down 17%. Dylan Mulvaney/Instagram
A day before the Mulvaney partnership, Heinerscheid revealed her plans to move Bud Light’s image away from “fratty” and “out of touch” humor.
Anheuser-Busch’s stock took a brief dip during the height of the blowback earlier this month but has since recovered.
Source: New York Post
