As we head into the 4th of July holiday, Bud Light has gotten a whole lot of bad news. Leah reported earlier on their desperate ploy to, once again, appeal to customers though $15 rebates, on up to three of them, with customers getting potentially back $45. They're essentially giving beer away for free, just as they did for Memorial Day. This may be part of how they're "actually increasing the investment on Bud Light three times this year as we move forward," according to Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth. On Monday afternoon, though, it was revealed that Bud Light sales had dropped 27.9 percent in the week ending June 24, compared to the same time last year.
Although that's slightly better than the record worst of a 28.5 percent drop from the previous week, the New York Post noted, it's not by much. The amount of units sold did, in fact, hit its record worst, at a 31.3 percent drop. It had been 31.1 percent the week before that.
The decrease in sales volume for the week ending June 10 had been at 30.3 percent compared to the same time last year, which at the time was the biggest since the boycott began. Customers have been boycotting since the brand honored trans activist Dylan Mulvaney on April 1 with a commemorative can set meant to be a "gift."
Even with the important holiday coming up, it doesn't look like Bud Light is making improvements.
"The Fourth of July is the biggest beer holiday in terms of retail sales and an opportunity to move a lot of volume," Dave Williams, vice president of Bump Williams Consulting is quoted. "And there has been no notable signs where the course has changed for Bud Light."
Then again, they don't look like they're really trying to make those improvements. Rebates likely aren't helping. It's not enough when the brand alienated its customer base, not just by honoring Mulvaney, but with comments from Bud Light Marketing Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid, took a leave of absence and has reportedly been fired, according to the Daily Caller, though the company won't speak to it.
Heinerscheid just a few months ago claimed that she wanted to market the "declining" brand to "young people," and that the customer base had been "fratty and out of touch."
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Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”.
— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) April 9, 2023
How’s that working out for you, lady? @budlight pic.twitter.com/zNYKbMnZnu
Bud Light is also still partnering with LGBTQ+ causes and sponsoring Pride parades, as it did with the particularly vulgar one in Toronto late last month, where children were exposed to adult content.
And, Whitworth hasn't even ruled out partnering with Mulvaney again. He wouldn't speak directly to it when on "CBS Mornings" last week.
Bud Light's move to alienate its customer base looks to be having far-reaching consequences throughout the company, not just for the executives. As WRAL News reported last week, hundreds of employees will lose their jobs with a glass plant factory being forced to close down in mid-July:
In a statement last Thursday, the company told the Ruston leader in Lousiana that the Wilson plant is closing, along with the Ruston plant, which employs 245 people. The statement doesn't identify a specific reason for the closures, only calling them part of a "Multi-year Performance Optimization Program."
"Since April, we've had a couple of machines down," said James Munhall, Journeyman Machine Repair Mechanic. "It was, of course, being pointed towards the Bud Light situation."
WRAL News obtained an internal memo from the Wilson plant manager dated May 18. it says, "Due to slow sales with Anheuser Inbev," two of the factory's production lines would be shutting down. Multiple longtime employees at the Wilson plant say most of their business was making bottles for Budweiser and bud light.
Industry data shows Bud light's sales fell 24% during May after a nationwide boycott over the brand's partnership with a transgender influencer.
At a meeting at the Wilson glass plant last Wednesday, employees say the plant manager told them that boycott was forcing them to shut down.
"Because of Budweiser no longer selling the bottles, they no longer needed our product," said David Williams, Machine Repair Mechanic.
However, some workers feel there are other issues at hand.
"Personally, I don't believe this is all a Bud Light thing, I believe it's the industry itself," said Munhall.
Mulvaney is turning on the brand too, it turns out, so it's not like he'd want to partner with the brand again regardless. As Leah also covered, Mulvaney lashed out against the company late last week, speaking about the incident for the first time since it took place.
"I'm bringing it up because what transpired from that video was more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined and I should have made this video months ago but I didn't," Mulvaney said in part. "I was scared and I was scared of more backlash and I felt personally guilty for what transpired."
Mulvaney also said what took place was worse than the company not honoring a trans person at all. "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," Mulvaney said, "because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want." Mulvaney also tried to focus on a larger conversation about trans people. "And the hate doesn't end with me. It has serious and grave consequences for the rest of our community. And we're customers, too," he said.
A line of gay bars in Chicago also stopped selling the product, and its perfect Corporate Equality Index (CEI) score from the Human Rights Campaign came under threat, with those standards becoming increasingly extreme.
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