As discussed at the beginning of the month, you can argue that most politics-based boycotts rarely last very long. Perhaps previous Bud Light drinkers will indeed get back to their old habits someday. But that Dylan Mulvaney post featuring Bud Light ran in early April, and the sales numbers for the month are now public:
Total Anheuser-Busch beer volumes were down by 12.5 percent in the month while sales from Molson Coors and Constellation Brands rose 7.6 percent and 3.8 percent respectively, according to Beer Business Daily.
Bud Light itself took a heavy beating, falling 21.4 percent in the month while sales of parent brand Budweiser were 11.5 percent down.
Coors Light, a direct rival to Bud Light, appears to have been the biggest beneficiary of the protests, putting on 10.9 percent in April.
Meanwhile the Washington Post profiles a gay bar owner in Seattle that decided to “stop carrying products from Anheuser-Busch InBev, the brand’s parent company,” because the beers weren’t all that popular with customers, and the owner said the company “has never really aligned with what I believe in.”
Whether or not Anheuser-Busch’s advertising team believed they were taking sides in a culture war or a contentious political or ideological debate, a significant chunk of their customers believed the company was doing just that. The company’s leadership can complain about the previous “brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor,” as Bud Light’s previous vice president of marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, characterized it before she was put on leave. But no one thought the “dilly dilly” knights were attempting to restore the monarchy, no one thought the “wassup” guys were part of a plot to alter the English language, and no one thought that the Budweiser frogs were croaking out messages warning about climate change.
If you want to sell beer, your advertising and marketing efforts should emphasize… you know, beer. No doubt there are a lot of advertising managers and corporate executives who would like to weigh in on transgender rights, racism, climate change, abortion, gun control, and other topics. Maybe if your brand is Ben and Jerry’s or Starbucks, your existing customer base will welcome and applaud these messages. But as I said at the beginning of this controversy, Bud Light’s advertising managers didn’t seem to understand their existing customer base… and apparently didn’t want to understand their existing customer base.