AB InBev should defy the Bud Light culture war

Anheuser-Busch announced this week that two executives had gone on leaves of absence after a stunt for Bud Light involving Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender actress and TikTok influencer, became the latest battle in the US culture war. Their fate will send a shiver down the spines of many other marketers.

“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer,” Anheuser-Busch’s chief executive, Brendan Whitworth, had pleaded earlier. Well, good luck with that. Sales of Bud Light plunged after rightwing politicians and celebrities condemned it for being a “woke company” and boycotted the brand.

It all started innocently, with Mulvaney posting a jokey video to her 1.8mn Instagram followers. “This month, I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever, a can with my face on it,” she said. Anheuser-Busch, part of AB InBev, said Mulvaney was one of “hundreds” of influencers it used for its brands.

A familiar storm of media outrage and faux offence followed Bud Light’s attempt to broaden its market. Alissa Heinerscheid, the brand’s vice-president of marketing and one of the pair now on leave, came in for a drubbing. “She wants to sell to people who, up until now, have had little or no interest in buying or drinking Bud Light,” thundered Jim Geraghty in the conservative National Review.

Forgive me, but I thought that was the point of marketing, especially when you are trying to revive a brand in long-term decline because fewer Americans who, in his words, “own guns, donate to pro-life causes, or drive a pick-up truck” actually buy it. Even before Mulvaney’s video, its US volume sales had fallen 6.4 per cent in the year to March 24, according to Nielsen data.

The brand does not fit the red state stereotype, anyway: it was launched in 1982 as a lower carbohydrate, less bitter, spin-off of Budweiser. It followed Miller Lite, which originated as a diet beer for calorie counters in the new age of fitness. The beers now taking sales from both are sharper imports, such as Corona, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, and Modelo Especial.

Bud Light is a fading asset that needs to regain some cachet among millennials and Gen-Zers: never mind gender inclusivity, that is economic reality. As Heinerscheid admitted with admirable honesty in a podcast interview: “If we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light.”

Heinerscheid went on (correctly but tactlessly) to describe Bud Light’s traditional marketing as having involved “fratty, kind of out-of-touch humour” and to extol its shift to “a campaign that’s truly inclusive”. She was referring not to the Mulvaney post, but to a Super Bowl ad in February showing a young couple dancing to the hold music on a phone.

I still struggle to grasp what was wrong with the ads themselves. Neither the Super Bowl spot nor Mulvaney’s video were abrasive: they were both as light as the beer they advertised. In the days before activists on both right and left started trawling the internet for instant offence, the latter might have gone unnoticed.

Mass brands have always attempted to be inclusive, in the sense of pleasing a wide range of customers. “I’d like to teach the world to sing/ In perfect harmony/ I’d like to buy the world a Coke/ And keep it company,” sang the multi-ethnic “First United Chorus of the World” in Coca-Cola’s famous 1971 ad. AB InBev’s “hope to build a future that everyone can celebrate, and everyone can share” is similarly mushy.

But it is trickier to be vaguely well meaning now. Brands that deliberately provoke controversy by taking stands on social issues, such as Nike and Ben & Jerry’s, have a clearer strategy. They alienate some customers, and risk boycotts (Nike has faced one in the UK after using Mulvaney to promote a sports bra) but they energise others.

They also know that protests are febrile and storms often pass as rapidly as they have erupted. Bud Light US retail store sales fell 17 per cent in mid-April, but AB InBev can afford to be patient: as one academic study found, “political consumerism campaigns on social media and their portrayal in the press are not always mirrored in [long-term] sales outcomes.”

The study was of Goya Foods, a canned beans brand whose chief executive, Robert Unanue, backed Donald Trump in 2020. Goya faced both a boycott and a more effective Trumpite campaign to support its products: sales rose briefly by 22 per cent, only for the effect to dissipate entirely after three weeks. The same constituency that is now attacking Bud Light got angry, then forgot.

That is why Anheuser-Busch should stick with its marketing approach, rather than wringing its hands weakly. These efforts to broaden Bud Light’s reach made perfect sense and it has since gained free publicity. The clamour does not change the fact that it needs more drinkers, whether pick-up drivers, urban couples or trans actresses. The rest is froth.

john.gapper@ft.com