Tipsheet

Actually, Everything Is NOT 'Fine' With Bud Light

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 11, 2023 6:30 PM

This piece has been updated to include details about Bud Light's number of units sold. 

Bud Light is still trying to pretend the company isn't a total mess. The more they try, the more cringe it is, and the worse they look, with the release of two ads over Twitter on Sunday being case in point. After the brand honored trans activist Dylan Mulvaney with a commemorative gift of beer cans, they faced such backlash that they went dark on Twitter from April 14 to June 22. As Julio covered at the time, that ad from June 22 was ruthlessly mocked, yet they still keep coming.

The Sunday ad is particularly tone deaf in that it includes language from a popular meme template of a dog sitting drinking coffee despite the house being engulfed in flames. "It's fine, this is fine," reads the tweet accompanying the ad. 

The 9-second-ad features a woman in a dress casually eating watermelon while other picnic-goers around her flee a storm. Other items from a picnic, including a Bud Light can on the table, get swept away. 

Among the over 2,000 replies were responses sharing the original meme, as well as others trolling the brand.

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Getting mercilessly mocked isn't the only problem currently facing Bud Light. As the New York Post reported on Monday, Bud Light sales went down 28.5 percent for the week ending July 1 in comparison to last year's sales. Those numbers are slightly worse than the 27.9 percent from the previous week, though they had been at a 28.5 percent loss the week before that, which was the company's record-worst. Newsweek also obtained NielsenIQ sales data showing that the number of units of Bud Light sold was down 31.2 percent compared to the same time last year. That's about the same as its record-worst, the 31.3 percent that it was the previous week.

The New York Post also noted how other Anheuser Busch brands are being impacted as well, including other brands that had been pretty much able to hold steady until now:

To make matters worse, Bud Light’s woes recently appear to have “infected” its sister brands at Anheuser Busch, according to Bump Williams, whose eponymous consulting firm crunched the latest numbers from NielsenIQ.

Sales of Michelob Ultra — the nation’s No. 3 beer last year — were down by 4.3% in the week ended July 1 while Busch Light sales were down 8.5%, according to the Bump Williams Consulting and NielsonIQ data.

“Budweiser trends have been slipping for a very long time, but it’s the Michelob Ultra negative numbers and now Busch Light negative trends that are most alarming to me,” Williams told The Post. “They were very healthy prior to April 1.”

Meanwhile, Modelo Especial, the No. 2 beer brand in the US, saw its sales jump 11.4% during the week ended July 1. The rival brew could overtake Bud Light before the close of the year if the brands continue on their current trajectories, Williams said.

Townhall looked to raise awareness of other Anheuser Busch brands back in May.

The Bud Light Twitter account also tweeted out a GIF of a beer can being opened, pointing out that "[t]he best beer is an open beer." That may be the case, but people aren't exactly opening Bud Light beer, and simply tweeting about it won't make it so.