TheQuartering [4/25/2023]
News that Bud Light has seen a 17 percent decline in sales revenue since it received backlash over a partnership with a transgender influencer has been welcomed by conservatives. They’ve taken it as a sign their calls for a boycott have been successful.
Volume of beer sales had declined 11 percent in the first week of the controversy, ending April 8, and 21 percent in the week ending April 15. This is according to figures from NielsenIQ and Bump Williams Consulting, originally cited by trade newsletter Beer Marketer’s Insights.
On April 2, Mulvaney posted a video to her 1.7 million Instagram followers. In it, she explained that Bud Light had sent her a personalized can with her face on to commemorate 365 days of being a woman. The brand faced criticism of alienating its traditional audience, and the row has crystalized a broader debate about the acceptance of transgender individuals in public life.
Following the boycott calls, supporters of Kari Lake, the Donald Trump-backed GOP candidate for Arizona Governor in 2022, refused to drink the beer at an open bar at a rally in Iowa. Meanwhile, a bar owner in Kentucky said he had noticed the drink sparking rows between patrons. Other licensed venues have withdrawn the beer from sale.
The partnership has drawn public displays of anger. Musician Kid Rock took a gun to several cases of Bud Light in a viral video, while a Republican state senator in Missouri posted a video of himself smashing a can with a baseball bat outside his state’s Capitol building.
Many prominent figures have also waded into the debate. Donald Trump Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene are among those to have made reference to the row. Celebrities such as Joe Rogan and Caitlyn Jenner have also weighed in.
The controversy has caught the attention of the White House, which condemned threats made against Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch. Biden administration press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of a bomb threat against one of the brewery’s facilities that “violence and vitriol against transgender Americans has to stop.”