Bud Light’s sales slump deepened mid-August amid ongoing fallout from the brand’s engagement with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who recently hinted at the controversy during an awards show.
Sales volumes of Bud Light at off-premise locations like grocery stores fell by 20.1 percent so far this year through Aug. 19 compared to the same period last year, according to Nielsen IQ sales data via Bump Williams Consulting.
On a dollar basis, Bud Light sales were down 15.9 percent over the same period compared to a year earlier, suggesting that the conservative boycott of the brand over its marketing partnership with Mr. Mulvaney continues to impact its parent company’s bottom line.
The ongoing sales decline was triggered when the brand rolled out one personalized beer can featuring the face of Mr. Mulvaney—a male who identifies as a female.
“This month I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever—a can with my face on it,” Mr. Mulvaney said on April Fool’s Day.
Mr. Mulvaney, who has over 10 million followers on TikTok, posted a series of videos promoting Bud Light and showing off the personalized can, with some conservatives accusing the brand of promoting a transgender agenda and calling for a boycott.
Since the boycott calls began in April, the company that owns Bud Light, Anheuser-Busch InBev, has lost billions of dollars in revenue and market value.
Bud Light, which for decades had been America’s top-selling beer brand, was recently ousted from the top spot by competitor Modelo.
While the brand has struggled since its partnership with Mr. Mulvaney hit headlines, the influencer recently received an award, and while accepting it onstage, he appeared to mock the controversy surrounding the boycott.
‘Gonna Go Have a Beer’
Mr. Mulvaney was awarded the “Breakout Creator” award at the 2023 Streamy Awards in Los Angeles, California, on Sunday night, and appeared to poke fun at the controversy surrounding his partnership with Bud Light.“My life has been changed for the better,” Mr. Mulvaney said at the Streamys, while pointing to his breakout moment on social media when he said he posted his “coming out video” that became his “Days of Girlhood” series.
“But on the flipside, there’s also been an extreme amount of transphobia and hate, and I know that my community is feeling it, and I know that even our allies are feeling it,” he said.
Mr. Mulvaney then encouraged his fellow content creators in attendance at the event to proclaim their support for the transgender community.
“I think allyship right now needs to look differently. You need to support trans people publicly and proudly,” Mr. Mulvaney said.
Then, while he didn’t directly address the Bud Light boycott, Mr. Mulvaney quipped before exiting the stage: “I’m gonna go have a beer.”
Mr. Mulvaney has addressed the Bud Light controversy more directly in the past, saying in a video last June that his promotional post led to bullying and “more transphobia that I could’ve imagined.”
He also blamed Bud Light for not showing more support amid the boycott fallout.
“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all, because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want,” Mr. Mulvaney said in a video posted on social media.
He said he was surprised at how the whole thing had blown up over a single promotional video on Instagram.
Anheuser-Busch CEO Michel Doukeris told the Financial Times in an earlier interview that the boycott was driven by “misinformation and confusion” circulating on social media.
Mr. Doukeris insisted that Mr. Mulvaney’s involvement wasn’t part of an official Bud Light marketing campaign.
The Boycott
Mr. Mulvaney’s partnership with Bud Light led to a number of prominent conservative figures urging boycotts.Singer Kid Rock used Bud Light cans as target practice to express his anger at the promotional campaign, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would be boycotting Bud Light.
Former President Donald Trump also weighed in on the controversy, suggesting boycotts can be an effective way to send a message to brands that critics say are pushing a leftist agenda.
“It’s time to beat the Radical Left at their own game,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social earlier in May. “Money does talk—Anheuser-Busch now understands that.”
The market value of Bud Light maker Anheuser-Busch InBev has sunk from around $132.4 billion on April 1, the day Mulvaney trumpeted the personalized can on social media, to around $114 billion on Aug. 29.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis weighted in and called on the state’s pension fund manager to take legal action against Anheuser-Busch for its alleged “failure to remediate the problem and repair its relationship with millions of disaffected American consumers,” which will “financially harm the [State Board of Administration] and other shareholders.”
The governor suggested Anheuser-Busch breached its duties to shareholders by making promotional materials for the activist. In response, the beer giant said that “Anheuser-Busch InBev takes our responsibility to our shareholders, employees, distributors, and customers seriously.”
Anheuser-Busch InBev did not respond to an earlier request for comment from The Epoch Times.
