News

Bud light sales are cratering…along with other A/B beers

2 May 2023
KITDAFBS

(AP Photo/Gene Puskar, File)

DAVID STROM | HotAir

Mainstream Republican leaders have asked conservatives to stop boycotting Bud Light because they contribute to Republican candidates and the Republican Party.

You may be shocked to learn that even diktats from the top of the Party are being ignored by the man in the street. It’s almost as if we vote for Republicans because we don’t like being dictated to and prefer candidates who are supposed to protect our individual rights.

Because of that fact, we are disinclined to sit down, shut up, and do what we are told. We aren’t Democrats, you know.

Because conservatives tend to be individualists and we don’t generally like mixing our economic and political lives, we don’t tend to engage in boycotts. That, too, has been a tool that liberals use, and have used quite successfully to bully corporations into abject compliance with their agenda.

But when Bud Light engaged Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesmodel and its Vice President explained that the company wanted to dump its current customers for a higher class of people, a funny thing happened: conservatives agreed to leave the beer for alternatives.

Fine. Do you think we are “frat boys?” We’ll go elsewhere and you can become the Gen Z transgender beer. You wanted it, you got it.

So despite the pleadings of the Establishment, conservatives have been leaving the brand in droves, and the informal boycott has created a “reverse halo” effect that is harming other Anheuser-Busch brands as well.

Sales of Bud Light have been plunging since the company enlisted the help of transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a marketing campaign a month ago.

In the week that ended April 22, the brand’s in-store sales plummeted more than 26%, according to figures reported by Bump Williams Consulting, a Connecticut-based firm that specializes in the alcoholic beverage industry.

And the decline is only accelerating. The week before, sales dropped by 21%. The week before that, it was 11%.

Bud Light is still the bestselling beer in America by far, said Bump Williams, the founder, president and CEO of the agency that bears his name. In 2022, Anheuser-Busch InBev sold more than $4.8 billion worth of it in stores, he said, far outpacing Modelo Especial ($3.75 billion) and Michelob Ultra ($3.3 billion).

But if the company can’t stop the decline in sales, especially as the peak beer-drinking summer season approaches, “then Bud Light is in serious trouble this year. And I think it runs the risk of losing that No. 1 position at the end of calendar year 2023 to Modelo Especial,” Williams said.

Those numbers are stunning, both in their scale and because the sales losses are increasing, not decreasing.

Rather than blowing over, the problem is snowballing and beginning to hurt other brands. Michelob Ultra, for instance, originally picked up some sales as a Bud Light alternative until people realized it, too, was an Anheuser-Busch product. So people switched again.

During the controversy, sales have shot up for Bud Light’s biggest competitors, Miller Lite and Coors Light, Williams said. What is more, he is beginning to see what is known as a negative halo effect — other Anheuser-Busch brands are suffering because of the dispute.

“I also think that what’s happening now is that anybody that is a Bud Light drinker and switches to Michelob Ultra because they don’t want to be seen holding a Bud Light, someone down the bar is going to say, ‘Hey, buddy, that’s an Anheuser-Busch product you’re holding,’” Williams said.

The slowdown in sales of Michelob Ultra is of particular concern to Anheuser-Busch because it had been one of the fastest-growing brands on the market, said David Steinman, vice president and executive editor at Beer Marketer’s Insights.

I love that there is a magazine called “Beer Marketer’s Insights.” It is so profoundly American.

In the past, I have never liked boycotts, perhaps because they were a tactic of the Left. But when Gillette began insulting men as toxic I stopped buying their products because I was insulted. It wasn’t so much a boycott as a repulsion to their “identity.” To this day I avoid their products as if they were picked up off a San Francisco sidewalk and covered in human feces.

Advertising has always been about creating goodwill–corporations actually have an accounting for the value of goodwill and it is considered a real asset. The value that the “brand” brings. It’s why you see commercials like this:

That ad isn’t about beer, but to build goodwill. Budweiser destroyed a good chunk of that goodwill by insulting its customers.

Early on in the controversy, I saw some people arguing that most Americans don’t care enough to boycott the brand and that the controversy would blow over. History was on the side of the doubters.

But “most people” is a generic term. “Most people” don’t have to boycott a brand for it to be destroyed. “Enough” people is enough. A 26% drop in sales tells us that about 3/4 of Bud Light drinkers don’t care, but so what? Losing a percent or two of sales is cause for distress at a company. Losing 10% is a cause for panic, and 26% is a disaster of epic proportions.

Bud Light has lost 26% so far, and the damage continues. Even if sales slowly come back, the goodwill and many customers are gone. It was a devastating blow.

Good. This was not about Dylan Mulvaney. None of the Dylan Mulvaney controversy is actually about him. It is about the assault on normality, the queering of America. If Dylan decided to get out of the highly lucrative business of cosplaying a young girl the agenda remains, and must be stopped.

Dylan is a tool, nothing more. A tool that is getting rich off the agenda. It is the agenda that is evil.

I, for one, was indifferent to Bud Light, not being much of a beer drinker and not a connoisseur of the beverage. I happily drink Miller, and very much like Blue Moon. But I prefer bourbon.

But now? No, thank you.

Original Here