After an advertising campaign to appease woke pressure gone wrong, Anheuser-Busch is scrambling to put the pieces of its brand back together. The 165-year-old brand and maker of Bud Light and other popular beers is working to reconnect with its audience that they ostracized in a transgender advertising campaign. Country music stars John Rich and Travis Tritt called for a boycott of the brand. Kid Rock and others joined in the boycott, causing the company’s market cap to dip by 5 billion dollars in a day.
The CEO issued a statement not saying much of anything other than re-messaging the brand values, including bringing people together and its proud history in America:
— Anheuser-Busch (@AnheuserBusch) April 14, 2023
FoxNews.com reported, “They’ve already done enough damage in one week to disrupt year-long sales projections,” a beer-sales representative who works with national beer retailers such as Costco told FOX Business. “You don’t just make up those sales. People aren’t going to drink twice as much Bud Light the following weekend to recover the lost business.”
“You’re marketing to an audience that represents a fraction of 1% of consumers while alienating the much larger base of your consumers,” Fox reported.
Industry insiders say the brand sales have been down as it is and are likely to be overtaken by competitors. This, they say, may have been the icing on the cake.
