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(Dylan Mulvaney/Instagram)
These are polarizing times and Bud Light is continuing to face a backlash following its partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer whose image was put on a Bud Light beer can to celebrate “365 Days of Girlhood.”
Bud Light’s decision to showcase the Trans Tik Tok activist on a special can spurred a Boycott Bud Light! online campaign, a video of Kid Rock shooting up a bunch of bud light beer cans that went viral, and a huge surge in online interest in the Samuel Adams Beer.
Amid the backlash, AB’s market capitalization has dropped nearly $6billion in the past 10 days, a decline of nearly 5%, as the company remained relatively silent save for a short statement confirming the partnership.
On April 14th, almost two weeks after Dylan Mulvaney’s Instagram announcement, Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth released a formal statement (without specifically addressing its partnership with the trans activist) that failed to put the matter to rest.
The initial Dylan Mulvaney announcement took place on April 1 (ironically April Fool’s Day) and in spite of Anheuser-Busch’s desperate efforts to put the matter to bed the brand has been experiencing serious sales declines ever since then.
By the end of May Bud Light was dethroned as the nation’s #1 beer by Modelo Especial, a Mexican beer brand that’s part of the Anheuser-Busch family everywhere in the world except in the US, where it brewed south of the border by Constellation Brands who sell it in the US.
And now the New York Post is reporting that Bud Light sales dropped 24.4% in the week ended June 3 — slightly worse than the 23.9% decline over the previous week which had included steep discounting over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, according to data from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ.
One positive is that Anheuser-Busch’s other brands such Budweiser and Natural Light, which also took early sales hits due to the Trans controversy, appear to be slowing…
“The majority of Anheuser-Busch InBev brands showed an improvement in trend declines versus the prior week,” said Bump Williams, in a statement. “Perhaps this is the turning point.”
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