“Oh bullcrap, they expected the backlash. They are betting on this blowing over and being forgotten, just like the NFL, NASCAR, and all pro-sports wokeness campaigns. Their message gets across, there is some light boycotting and boo-hoo hooing by conservatives, and then 2 weeks later back to spending money on those products. Conservatives are horrible at boycotts and the left knows it.”
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I don’t know about that. You can mess with a lot of things, but once you go after a guy’s garage fridge full of beer, things start to get serious. If there is Bud Light in that fridge, every time he opens that door he is going to see Mulvaney’s face. His friends that come over to hang out will mock him (or at least he is afraid they will), so he makes sure he has a different brand in there for the Friday night BBQ, poker. or darts game. And, once you switch beers you need a strong reason to switch back.
It has been a over a week and this story is still making front page news. Usually brand damages blow over faster than this or the company apologies and works to undo the harm to its brand. Think back on the Coke damage with the new recipe and branding. They had to fix things with Coke Classic and basically apologize for screwing up.
Upper management is already distancing themselves from the decision to feature Mulvaney as an “influencer” and saying they weren’t aware of the campaign. That’s a big step from their original response.
As a beer industry consultant said, it’s not as if AB is going to make up that lost six billion in market share by beer drinkers suddenly consuming twice as much Bud Light this weekend. That money is gone. AB is going to have to do something to stop the bleed. Some Bud Light drinkers are just now finding out about the marketing catastrophe and their favorite beer brand going “woke”. Some will not learn of it until tomorrow when they mention to a co-worker they plan on stopping to get beer on the way home on Friday.
I’ve heard no stories of bars or package stores saying that there was a drop in sales for a few days and then sales of Bud Light went back to normal. All stories continue to be that the beer is not selling and stores are not re-stocking as usual.
We shall see. If it is still a story come Monday, AB will be in serious trouble.
Daughter managed bottle shop for 3 years here in the cornfields of Flyover
Bud and Bud Lite were the biggest sellers. Miller Lite and Busch are not far behind
FWIW
so far
they have definitely
not owned the decision
The thing here is that this is something people can actually DO something about. Most of this woke trans queer stuff is something people have to put up with because they cannot do anything about it. But not in this case, the law of large numbers apply here plus what I call “reverse cancellation” where classic Americans can cancel something that represents this trans garbage stuffed in their faces. In this case it’s AB and something that has a very defined target audience (Bud Light drinkers). This isn’t Nike selling to a large cross-section of the population but AB selling to a group of consumers who walk up to coolers full of other beer and makes a purchase over and over.
There has not been anything else like this before IMO except maybe you could compare it to voting for Trump but in this case AB can’t fake their sales because these votes are paid for with cash.
I’m so amused by this, the absolute stupidity of AB is stunning and they knew what they were doing even though simple math says you won’t sell more bad beer to woke people who wear clothes of the other sex. Even if AB captured the entire LBGTBLAHBLAHBLAH community the number of them is tiny. AB has invented their own method of seppuku by hiring yet another marginally intelligent Harvard graduate who thinks their $hit does not stink.
You can’t change the weather, you can’t change your sex and you can’t make good old boys embrace cross-dressing homosexuals.