Opinion
New reports have indicated that the highly effective boycott of Bud Light has cost its parent company Anheuser-Busch as much as $1.4 billion in the wake of the brand teaming up with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a partnership in April of last year.
Anheuser-Busch Loses $1.4 Billion
CNN reported that on Thursday, Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) reported record revenues for 2023, admitting that its “full growth potential was constrained” by its U.S. business, with sales being hurt by the Bud Light boycott that was launched over the Mulvaney partnership.
Last year, organic revenue in North America plummeted $1.4 billion as beer sales by volume dramatically decreased, largely due to the decline in Bud Light sales in the U.S. This is devastating news for AB InBev, as beer makes up the vast majority of its revenue.
“In the U.S., performance remains very underwhelming with revenue down at double-digit rates as the group lost market share,” Aarin Chiekrie, an equity analyst at online investing platform Hargreaves Lansdown, said on Thursday morning.
Related: Bud Light Humiliated As It Loses Crown As Bestselling Super Bowl Beer To Mexico’s Corona
Former Anheuser-Busch Exec Speaks Out
Anson Frericks, a former president of operations for Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch, told Fox Business earlier this month that the brand is having difficulty winning back consumers because Anheuser-Busch has not asked the customers “to come back to them.”
“They haven’t done a good job of climbing out of this ditch at all,” Frericks said. “You still have sales that are down 30% week over week, and that’s despite them last summer spending three times their planned marketing budget on Bud Light.”
Watch him talk more about this in the video below.
Last summer, Frericks admitted that Bud Light made a “mistake” in teaming up with Mulvaney.
“[Bud Light] was the largest brand in the U.S. because it was remarkably apolitical,” he stated. “It was always about sports, it was always about music, it was about bringing people together. That’s why it was a mistake that they did this campaign in the first place because they were unable to come out.”
“This campaign was a mistake,” Frericks continued. “Anheuser-Busch will not be doing campaigns like this moving forward. We’ll get back to the things that bring everybody together. Hopefully that can protect the jobs at Anheuser-Busch, jobs at wholesalers and get this company back growing in the right direction.”
Frericks concluded by calling on Anheuser-Busch executives to “harken back to what Bud Light always was, which is a great beer that was great to drink at football games and didn’t necessarily become part of the debate.”
Related: Kid Rock Backtracks On His Viral Bud Light Video – ‘Tantrum With A Machine Gun’
Trump Calls For ‘Second Chance’ For Bud Light
Earlier this month, the former President Donald Trump called on his supporters to give Bud Light a “second chance.”
“The Bud Light ad was a mistake of epic proportions, and for that a very big price was paid, but Anheuser-Busch is not a Woke company, but I can give you plenty that are,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance?” Trump later added. “What do you think? Perhaps, instead, we should be going after those companies that are looking to DESTROY AMERICA!”
The latest reports from Anheuser-Busch, however, indicate that Trump’s endorsement has done little to turn the tides when it comes to convincing consumers to come back to Bud Light. In the end, Bud Light really did make a huge mistake when it teamed up with Mulvaney, and it’s become clear that it’s one that the brand may never be able to recover from.
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