TheQuartering [5/5/2023]
Anheuser-Busch is telling US beer distributors it has fired the “third-party ad agency” behind Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney fiasco — but the beer giant is staying tight-lipped about the marketing firm’s identity, even launching a fresh ad campaign aimed at damage control, The Post has learned.
The company’s global CEO Michel Doukeris this week came out swinging at the “misinformation” being spread about the extent of Bud Light’s relationship with the transgender influencer, who has more than 10 million followers on TikTok.
“We need to clarify the facts that this was one camp, one influencer, one post and not a campaign,” the Anheuser-Busch boss said during an earnings call Thursday.
Anheuser-Busch also sent a letter to jittery distributors telling them it had cut ties with the firm responsible for the concept that has led to Bud Light sales cratering since Mulvaney last month posted a video on TikTok touting the best-selling beer in the country, multiple sources said.
The Belgian-based conglomerate said the beer can at the center of the firestorm, which features Mulvaney’s face, was not produced by Anheuser-Busch or in any of its facilities, several distributors told The Post.
“Ad agencies send out hundreds of influencer kits a year, some of which have a customized can included. This was one of those situations,” a distributor based in Texas told The Post.
John Skeffington, chief executive of family-owned Skeff Distributing in Decatur, Ill., said in a Facebook post: “The single can was produced by a third-party ad agency, not Anheuser-Busch.”
Skeffington went on to note his company “does not produce products or make marketing decisions for the products we sell,” adding that his firm and its more than 100 employees have been “negatively impacted by this unfortunate event.”
“Please don’t allow one decision to jeopardize the goodwill we have earned over many decades of being good friends and neighbors in all of the communities we serve,” Skeffington wrote.
However, the mystery remains about which marketing firm connected Mulvaney with Bud Light.