The top marketing executive for Bud Light parent Anheuser-Busch InBev won the “Creative Marketer of the Year” award, despite costing the company $20 billion over its recent transgender fiasco.
Bud Light has lost billions of dollars in revenue due to massive boycotts after the beer company decided to pair the brand with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, who claims to be a woman.
A marketing campaign by the company had Mulvaney posting images and videos touting Bud Light.
The beverage lost its place as the best-selling beer in America in May, according to the latest sales figures, due to a backlash from its conservative base.
Anheuser-Busch InBev Acceptance of the Award Turns Heads
On June 19, Anheuser-Busch InBev executives attended the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the south of France, a prestigious event equivalent to the Oscars in the advertising industry, to collect one of the highest honors in the business.Marcel Marcondes, the winner of the award, has been at Anheuser-Busch InBev for almost two decades, before the Mulvaney controversy exploded in early April,
Marcondes told his industry peers at the Cannes Lions marketing gala that the Mulvaney saga served as a “wake-up call” for the industry, reported the New York Post.
“In times like this, when things get divisive and controversial so easily, I think it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers, for us to be very humble,” he said.
Anheuser-Busch InBev is “really reminding ourselves of what we should do best every day, which is to really understand our customers, which is to really celebrate and appreciate every customer that loves our brands, but in a way that can make them be together, not apart,” he continued.
The Anheuser-Busch InBev executive refused to offer an apology for the Mulvaney fiasco, which the company continues to blame on an unnamed third-party marketer.
“It’s tough to see all the controversial and divisive debates happening in the United States the last couple of weeks involving lots of brands and companies, including, especially, Bud Light,” Marcondes told AdWeek.
However, some in the industry told The Wall Street journal that it would have been better for him and the company to decline the award in light of the Bud Light boycott, which cost the company nearly $20 billion in value.
Other marketers in attendance said that the years of work that the company has made outside of the Mulvaney episode should not negate its other creative achievements in the industry.
Bud Light Loses Top Spot to Mexico’s Modelo
Bud Light was replaced as America’s favorite beer by the Mexican lager Modelo Especial, whose international distribution happens to be controlled by Anheuser-Busch InBev, but whose North American operations are owned by Constellation Brands.Sales of Bud Light fell by 23 percent year over year in May, to $297.3 million, according to the research firm Circana.
In the week that ended on June 3, sales of Bud Light were down 24.4 percent compared to the syear-ago week, according to Bump Williams, a consulting firm.
This month, Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth, who is in charge of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s U.S. operations, said that the parent company will cut checks to wholesalers and distributors selling Bud Light.
Whitworth said “the discussion surrounding our company and Bud Light has moved away from beer,” after announcing a new three-step plan to revive the tarnished brand on June 15.
He offered a financial strategy that will involve “investing to protect the jobs of our frontline employees” and has plans to launch a new ad campaign this summer, to sell the beer as “easy to drink, easy to enjoy.”
“We are providing financial assistance to our independent wholesalers to help them support their employees,” Whitworth added.
He also said the company would reimburse distributors for “the freight/fuel surcharge through the end of 2023” as cases of Bud Light sit unsold on store shelves.
