Anheuser Busch continues its desperate attempt to recover from the controversial promotion with influencer Dylan Mulvaney, with the company now poised to buy back unsold expired cases as sales continue to plummet.
Mulvaney, 26, posted about drinking Bud Light in early April 2023 under the hashtag #budlightpartner. She posted the content to coincide with the NCAA March Madness tournament before joking that she doesn’t know what sport she’s promoting.
The disastrous marketing attempt has caused sales of America’s flagship beer to plummet 26 percent, despite Anheuser-Busch reporting a first-quarter profit of $1.65 billion and conservatives everywhere claiming to boycott the company.
A new profile on the company’s handling of PR, social media and sales backlogs admits the company and CEO Michel Doukeris are now being forced to buy back unsold and expired cases of soapsuds.
Bud Light is also planning a branding overhaul to align Bud Light with the company’s sponsorship of a veterans’ organization.
Anheuser Busch continues its desperate attempt to recover from the controversial promotion with influencer Dylan Mulvaney that has caused sales to fall
One reported move is for Bud Light to buy back cases of unsold and expired beer
According to the Wall Street Journal, they also plan to roll back marketing chief Alissa Heinerscheid’s plan and update what she describes as “fratty” and “out of touch” by promoting quintessentially American themes like soccer and country music.
Industry analysts have warned that barring drastic changes, negative volume trends due to the beer brand’s partnership with the transgender influencer will continue into the summer months.
For the week ended May 6, Bud Light store sales in the US fell 23.6 percent from a year earlier. And in the week before that, which ended April 29, sales fell 23.3 percent.
This follows sales declines in the week ended April 22, which came in at 21.4 percent. And seven days earlier, the drop was 17 percent, according to NielsenIQ data provided to by Bump Williams Consultancy.
The data, which shows U.S. sales falling by as much as 20 percent every week, has since been labeled “poor” by industry experts.
Bump Williams of Bump Williams Consultancy told : “I don’t think the sales/volume declines are going to get any worse, but I do think their negative volume trends will continue.”
He said a 20 percent drop in sales appears to be the new “norm” for Bud Light.
However, he added that experts are waiting to see what will happen to Memorial Day and summer sales season sales to assess whether the damage will continue.
A new profile on the company’s handling of PR, social media and sales setbacks admits the company and CEO Michel Doukeris (pictured) are trying to fix their mistakes
Mulvany released the content to coincide with the NCAA March Madness tournament, sparking the backlash against Bud Light
Williams, who specializes in the alcohol industry, told the St Louis Business Journal: “This appears to have leveled off the brand’s weekly decline, which has been in the -20 percent range for the past few weeks.”
“I wonder if this will be the ‘floor’ for expected declines in Bud Light unless something drastic changes.”
Anheuser-Busch was contacted for comment.
Meanwhile, at a CVS in West Palm Beach, Fla., in an attempt to move some of its Bud Light supplies, shelves were full of multi-packs of the beers.
Viewers joked that after the scandal, no one wanted to buy the alcohol anymore.
Another person said that after driving through various Mississippi stores and gas stations, they saw an abundance of Bud products because “nobody is buying them.”
Williams previously said that Bud Light needed to apologize, adding, “Right now their compass is completely broken. ‘There’s no game plan.’
Williams said that “Bud Light is in serious trouble this year” without a clear plan to handle the backlash and reverse the sales decline. He said the brand is still the best-selling brand in America, but risks being overtaken by Modelo Especial by the end of the year if the backlash continues.
The company has been hit with a spate of complaints, with many customers filming themselves dumping the liquid
His assessment comes after another PR expert told that Bud Light needs to get the issue right or they will “only hurt each other more”.
Bud’s recent reactions have been vague explanations about the Mulvaney partnership with no concrete apologies to angry customers.
Data from Beer Business Daily showed sales of the top US brand fell across all regions of the country.
Sales in the Rocky Mountain states fell the most, down 29 percent, with the South Atlantic, West-North-Central and East-South-Central each down 25 percent.
Bud Lights’ former Clydesdales horses were a staple of its ads, but the company wanted to try and reach new consumers before there was backlash
The can, which Bud Light partnered with transgender influencer Mulvaney, sparked the backlash that took the company two weeks to respond
Tumbleweed, a Wyoming cowboy bar, abandoned Bud Light after the controversy, opting for Guinness instead.
Sales in the East North Central region — which includes Michigan and Illinois, both of which have faced backlash against the beer — fell 23.5 percent in the week ended April 22.
HSBC analysts have downgraded Anheuser-Busch stock because it is in the middle of a “crisis” over the marketing blunder.