I’m not a huge beer drinker – I actually prefer distilled spirits – but when I do drink beer, I often drink Bud Light. It’s an easy beer to drink while golfing or grilling or meeting some friends after work. Unless you’ve been on a different planet for the past month, you’re aware that Bud Light found itself in hot water with its primary customer base when it chose to recognize social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s one year anniversary of “womanhood” (Mulvaney now identifies as a female). They sent her some cans of Bud Light with her image on them so she could use them on her social media accounts. These cans were never going to hit the store, but I’m not sure the public understood that.
It didn’t take long for conservatives to take issue with the decision. Kid Rock famously shot up cases with an assault rifle. Bars across the country cancelled their Bud Light (and other Budweiser and Busch products) orders and Yingling probably had the best week of sales in its history.
People ask me if I’m going to join the boycott. The answer is, “probably not.” My rationale is based on VP of Marketing for Bud Light, Alissa Heinerscheid’s infamous podcast video about the controversy. The part of her statement that was correct was when she stated that the Bud Light brand was in decline and needed to appeal to a broader audience.
If she had stopped there, everything would have probably been fine. The boycott would probably not have gained much traction. If it weren’t for the attention brought to the matter by conservative celebrities and Fox News, the Dylan Mulvaney thing would have only been noticed by her followers – not an insignificant number of people, but certainly not newsworthy. Heinerscheid’s efforts to introduce Bud Light to other markets is laudable. It’s also important to note that in 2021, New York City’s Stonewall Inn (famous for the Stonewall riots of 1969) announced it would not be selling Anheuser-Busch’s beers during Pride weekend in protest of its contributions to lawmakers who have supported anti-LGBTQ legislation. It’s natural for a company to not want to alienate a segment of the consumer base and olive branches to the LGBTQ community are logical. Although it’s not logical to alienate one group in order to attract another.
Unfortunately for Bud Light, Heinerscheid didn’t stop there. She went on to say, “We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out of touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.” She added “that to evolve and elevate means to incorporate ‘inclusivity’, it means shifting the tone, it means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive, and feels lighter and brighter and different, and appeals to women and to men.”
Budweiser was for years, and still is, the brand of the working class. Its drinkers have historically been white, male, blue collar types. Sam Malone would be a Bud drinker. Frazier Crane would not be. When Heinerscheid used the term “fratty” she wasn’t referring to college fraternities so much as she was saying the brand was male-oriented. She went on to use the word, “inclusive” twice. When white males hear the words, diversity, equity or inclusion, they hear someone speaking they know doesn’t like white men. In fact those words often come from the mouths of people who literally hate white men, especially working class white men. White men in rural America have come to understand that inclusivity doesn’t include them. It includes everyone but them. As one student body president put it, “to be truly inclusive, you have to exclude some people.”
She’ll probably get her wish as the battle lines have been drawn. For every juke joint bar in Oklahoma or Florida that stops selling Bud Light, there will probably be a hipster bar in New York or San Francisco that will add Bud Light to its menu. It’s unfortunate that the brand couldn’t have made strides in gaining market share in the big cities without alienating its core audience. McDonalds has marketed to African Americans for decades without coming across as anti-white.
Why won’t I be joining the boycott? First, boycotts don’t really work very long. Second, I was not and am not offended that they chose to market through Dylan Mulvaney. Companies encourage influencers like Mulvaney all the time in hopes of expanding their customer base. However, I was thoroughly disgusted with Heinerscheid’s response. It just reeks of Eastern liberal elitism. And finally, I think InBev got the message – Heinerscheid has taken a leave of absence, InBev lost billions in market capitalization during the controversy, and lots of companies are taking note on how to tread lightly in their efforts to improve their ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) scores. ESG, by the way, is a big part of the problem, but that’s the subject of a future article.
I’m not boycotting, but I might wait a month before cracking open my next Bud Light.