If you search any variation of “Bud Light Sales down,” the results will look like a drunk guy peeing in an alley, as in, all over the place. Down 30%, 69%, and 80%. You will find fact-checks by major media outlets whose relationship with the truth is spotty at best. But are they wrong?
The center-right is taking a victory lap, claiming scalps in the culture war, but if you look at BUD’s numbers, there’s not much to cheer about. Sure, the initial outrage coincided with a dip in both the stock price and market cap, but Anheuser Busch (AB) is a massive global company with, as I noted here, a lot of moving parts.
The first casualty (for the sake of appearances, IMO) is Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing. She is credited with the decision to pick a man to represent women. Alissa (a woman who identifies as a woman) is on a leave of absence but not for the Mulvaney thing, exactly. She was “dismissive” of the product’s customer base and whatever this is.
“I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light. It was, this brand is in decline, it’s been in decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light,” she said.
The brand overhaul she was driving, she said, would require “having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men.”
Instead of building a new customer base, she pissed off the old one. How about you use up some of that vacation time you’ve been banking, Alissa?
BUD has also asked a guy who identifies as a guy “who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch’s mainstream brands” to step away. Daniel Blake will be using up some of his vacation time as well, so no one is going without pay or benefits. And if either needs to change jobs, this will look great on a resume at any number of #woke corporations.
But why are they stepping away?
The initial reports were that AB had lost up to 5 billion in market Cap in the first few weeks of the “controversy,” but that is no longer true. BUD’s Cap was at 132.38 billion when the outrage began. The stock price was 66.92. Before the Bell rang Monday, April 24th, Market Cap was back to 130 (129.72), and the stock closed on Friday at 65.52.
The off Hours trading had it opening at 66.08 (and it did). And while a 2.5 billion shift in Market Cap is not “nothing” – on this playing field, it looks like nothing.
So, what about the reports from bar owners and beverage distributors that there is a glut of products on the shelves that people are not buying? I bet some of that is true but a handful of anecdotal reports from neighborhood bars are not changing the big picture.
And so we are clear, I’m not saying you should not vote with your feet. If you like Blight and want to stand up for real women, do that. Drink PBR, Stroh’s, Keystone, Natural, Milwaukee’s Best, Rolling Rock, Narragansett, Old Milwaukee, and Schlitz; there are plenty of weak American beers to replace it with (Rainier, Lone Stare, Ultra Deluxe Yellow Dog Water, etc.). Some are not terrible if you are already drunk on good beer, and for the price of a four-pack of something worth drinking, you can get 18 or 24 of those.
Keep the party going!
And assuming none of those are brewed by BUD or have fallen into the CEI trap (your due diligence is required), have at it. Free markets are only free if you choose the products and services yourself for reasons entirely your own. But before you knee-jerk share-re-share or promote a headline about how far mighty BUD hath fallen, understand that they have not.
Not yet.
Stumbled might be a better word. And the difference might be a matter of March Madness ending and the NHL and NBA playoffs beginning.
Sure, a few Bud Light ad peeps tripped over Mulvaney’s swelling social following as part of a lighter and brighter campaign that appeals to … men who act like women, but Human Rights Campaign was (I’m sure) happy with the effort and fundraising off of the protesting beer-drinkers response.
So, what if Mulvaney appeals to a sliver of confused ‘youtes’ who aren’t old enough to drink legally and a few rubberneckers who don’t care what gets pitched on that feed? He’s a social media influencer, and if you want to appeal to women who are not sure what shitty beer to drink, a man in a dress who behaves like a shallow caricature of a woman – might be a mistake.
But it should come with a higher price than a few Execs getting paid vacation time to burnish their resumes, so we need to be realistic about the problem and the solution – and relentless about the response. The situation on the Right has always been stamina. The Right can muster the numbers but rarely for the long haul, and the Left knows that. They wait us out or beat us down to speed up the process.
If the brand was already a damsel with a prostate in distress, just excise Bud Light from your lives.
Drink something else (please), and don’t go back. Ever. Don’t serve it at your house or bring it to a friend. If they offer, politely pass. Life is too short to drink Blight, and you deserve better than that. As I said here, “Mulvaney thinks he’s a girl. Bud Light thinks it’s a beer. A guy who thinks he is a girl drinking Bud Light should be the perfect fit.”
Whatever is happening hasn’t made much of a difference for the beverage giant, but it could. It might take months or years, but this is Bud Light. It shouldn’t be hard to give that stuff up.
