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Bud Light lost nearly 30% of its customer base after Kid Rock drew attention to its marketing campaign with the transgender social-media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
That ill-fated promotion, an attempt to expand the Anheuser-Busch (BUD) – Get Free Report brand’s customer base into the LGBTQ+ community, failed on multiple levels.
First, it angered part of the brand’s core audience. It may not make sense for Bud Light drinkers to be angry at the brand using a transgender influencer in a social-media marketing effort, but that’s clearly what happened.
Second, the company did not exactly have Mulvaney’s back once the backlash hit. Those two things led Bud Light sales to slump, which in turn saw the brand fall behind Modelo as the best-selling beer.
Since the backlash and boycott hit, Budweiser has been trying to take a business-as-usual approach. The company has been posting on social media as it always has, which has prompted as many mocking and hateful responses as playful or respectful ones.
It’s a tough position for any brand. Bud Light can’t directly apologize because that would say that partnering with a transgender person was wrong. The campaign was a mistake for the brand based on the makeup of its core audience, but a traditional apology would itself be wrong and would create a whole new set of problems.
So instead of an apology, Anheuser-Busch is taking a different tack. The beer company is giving free stuff to its customers as sort of a de facto “I’m sorry.” It’s as if a spouse who opted to hang out with friends when their partner was expecting to be taken to a fancy dinner buys flowers as a peace offering.
And while the giveaway is generous, the question of whether it will work is open.
