Anheuser Busch is continuing its desperate bid to recover from the controversial promotion with influencer Dylan Mulvaney, with the company now ready to repurchase unsold and expired cases as sales continue to decline.
Mulvaney, 26, posted herself drinking Bud Light in early April 2023 using the hashtag #budlightpartner. She posted the content to coincide with the NCAA March Madness tournament before joking that she didn’t know what sport she was promoting.
The disastrous marketing bid saw sales of America’s flagship beer plummet 26%, despite Anheuser-Busch reporting first-quarter profit of $1.65 billion and conservatives everywhere claiming to boycott the business.
A new profile of the company’s handling of public relations, social media and sales backlash admits that the company and CEO Michel Doukeris are now forced to buy back unsold and expired cases of foam.
Bud Light is also planning a rebranding, aligning Bud Light with the company’s sponsorship of a veterans organization.
Anheuser Busch is continuing its desperate bid to recover from its controversial promotion with influencer Dylan Mulvaney that caused a drop in sales
Reported move is Bud Light buying back unsold and expired cases of beer
They also plan to backtrack on marketing chief Alissa Heinerscheid’s plan to update what she called the “fratty” and “out of touch” brand image by heavily advertising all-American themes. like football and country music, depending on the the wall street journal.
Industry analysts have warned that unless something drastically changes, the negative volume trends will continue through the summer months due to the beer brand’s partnership with the transgender influencer.
For the week ending May 6, in-store sales of Bud Light in the United States were down 23.6% from a year earlier. And the previous week, ending April 29, sales fell 23.3%.
This follows the drop in sales for the week ending April 22, which was 21.4%. And seven days earlier the drop was 17%, according to NielsenIQ data provided to Dailymail.com by Bump Williams Consultancy.
The data – showing US sales falling 20% every week – has since been called “poor” by industry experts.
Bump Williams of Bump Williams Consultancy told DailyMail.com: “I don’t think the sales/volume decline will get any worse, but I do think their negative volume trends will continue.”
He said the 20% drop in sales seems like the new “norm” for Bud Light.
But he added that experts are waiting to see what happens to sales over Memorial Day and the summer selling season to assess whether the damage will continue.
A new profile of the company’s management of PR, social media and sales backlash admits the company and CEO Michel Doukeris (pictured) are trying to address their failures
Mulvany released the content to coincide with the NCAA March Madness tournament and sparked the backlash against Bud Light
Williams, who specializes in the alcohol industry, told the St Louis Business Journal: “This seems to be where the brand’s weekly declines have started to set in, falling into that -20% range at course of the last week.”
“I wonder if this will be the ‘bottom’ for Bud Light’s expected declines in the future unless something drastically changes.”
Anheuser-Busch has been contacted for comment.
Meanwhile, at a CVS in West Palm Beach, Florida that was trying to move some of its Bud Light stock shelves were fully stocked with beer multipacks.
Onlookers joked that no one wanted to buy the booze after the scandal.
Another person said that after browsing through various stores and gas stations in Mississippi, she saw an overflow of Bud products because “no one is buying it.”
Williams previously said Bud Light should apologize and added, “Right now their compass is completely broken. There is no game plan.
Williams said that without a clear plan to handle the backlash and reverse declining sales, “Bud Light is in serious trouble this year.” He said the brand was still the top-selling brand in America, but risked being overtaken by Modelo Especial by the end of the year if the backlash continues.
The business has been hit by a deluge of complaints, with many customers filming themselves pouring out the cash
His assessment comes after another PR expert told DailyMail.com that Bud Light needs to get the problem right or “they’ll only hurt themselves more”.
Bud’s current responses have been far-fetched explanations of the Mulvaney partnership with no concrete apologies to angry customers.
Data from Beer Daily Business showed that sales of the number one brand in the United States fell in all regions of the country.
Sales in the Rocky Mountain states fell most significantly, down 29%, with South Atlantic, Central-Northwest and Central-Southeast all down 25%.
Bud Lights’ former Clydesdales horses were a staple of its advertisements, but the company wanted to try and reach new consumers before the backlash hit.
The Bud Light can used to partner with transgender influencer Mulvaney and sparked the backlash that took the company two weeks to respond
The Tumbleweed, a Wyoming cowboy bar, ditched Bud Light after the controversy — instead, it opted for Guinness.
Sales in the Northeast Central region — which includes Michigan and Illinois, which both saw a backlash against beer — fell 23.5% in the week ending April 22.
It comes as HSBC analysts downgraded Anheuser-Busch stock because it is in the midst of a “crisis” over the marketing error.
