That someone is Bud Light vice president of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid. The decision to have a mentally ill man, err transgender activist be the new face of the brand was hers. She said she was inspired to update the “fratty” and “out-of-touch” humor of the beer company with “inclusivity” in an interview on a podcast last month.
One of the first casualties of that God-forsaken decision was the beer maker’s social media. Since getting one of the biggest ratios I’ve ever seen on Twitter for the announcement tweet, ALL of the Bud Light social media accounts have gone dark. There hasn’t been a single post on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook since the first of April.
While its market share has been declining of late, Bud Light is still the top selling brand of beer in the US. However, given the anecdotal evidence that’s starting to pop up, the brand is going to lose the top spot, and right soon. And it’s looking like it isn’t just the Bud Light brand that is taking the hit. According to Jeff Fitter, owner of Case & Bucks in Barnhart, Missouri, near the St. Louis headquarters of Anheuser-Busch, sales of Anheuser-Busch bottled products dropped 30% over the past week, while draft beer sales plummeted 50%.
Fitter isn’t alone in seeing sales declines for Bud Light, Alex Kesaris, the owner of Braintree Brewhouse in Massachusetts said eighty percent of Bud Light drinkers ordered something else this week, while the 20% who did order Bud Light “weren’t on social media and hadn’t heard yet” about its new transgender pitch person. “They didn’t order it again,” he said, after other patrons told them about the Bud Light marketing misfire.
According to St. Louis-area operator John Rieker the effort to be inclusive excluded the people who matter most — Bud Light drinkers.
“It’s kind of mind-boggling they stepped into this realm,” Rieker, who owns Harpo’s Bar and Grill in Chesterfield, Missouri, “You’re marketing to an audience that represents a fraction of 1% of consumers while alienating the much larger base of your consumers.”
I for one, will be keeping an eye out for the quarterly sales reports for A-B. It will be interesting to see how much this hurts A-B and Bud Light.
Also, you’re welcome for all the old-school Bud Light ads. I miss me some Spuds MacKenzie. . .