Anheuser-Busch InBev, the owner of Bud Light, has been hit with a 10.5% drop in U.S. sales after a collaboration with transgender TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney sparked a boycott backlash from conservative consumers. The Telegraph has more.
The owner of Bud Light has revealed a steep drop in U.S. sales after the beer’s collaboration with a transgender social media influencer sparked a backlash.
The world’s biggest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, revealed that U.S. revenues dropped by 10.5% in the second quarter of the year.
It said that an increase in global revenues of 7.2% to $14.8 billion (£11.7 billion) had been “partially offset by the revenue decline of Bud Light in the U.S.”.
AB InBev infuriated some of its most loyal, more conservative customers with its decision to partner transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney to attract younger drinkers.
The decision was criticised as tone deaf by everyone from Tucker Carlson to Kid Rock.
Mulvaney, a 26 year-old influencer who describes herself as one of “the most privileged trans women in America”, posted images of the customised Bud Light cans with her face on to mark “365 Days of Girlhood”.
She also published a video of herself drinking a Bud Light in the bath.
Days before Mulvaney’s partnership was unveiled, Alissa Heinerscheid, Vice-President of Marketing at Bud Light, said she wanted to modernise Bud Light from a “brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humour”.
In the eyes of Anheuser-Busch’s marketing executives, Bud Light had become a brand “in decline”.
Ms. Heinerscheid told the Make Yourself at Home podcast that she wanted “a campaign that is truly inclusive”.
In response, the musician Kid Rock filmed himself taking a machine gun to several cases of the beer and shouting: “F— Bud Light. And f— Anheuser-Busch.”
