An analysis of the bud light controversy

How it started, how it's going, how it flopped, and what it means

Walker Wambsganss

12 August 2023

Introduction

Advertising: a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action, usually with respect to a commercial offering, such as an item for sale or a service.

When people are asked what they think about advertising, many initially think of New York’s Times Square, with its robust and grandiose signage blasting messages and logos at you with blinding intensity. But to others, it’s much more low key.

If we look past the “suit and tie,” formal definition, then we see that the real, everyday nature of advertising is to connect customers, both future and current, with things that they want. The more practical versions of everyday advertising do not take up the monolithic proportions of  either the aforementioned Times Square or the likes of the Goodyear Blimp; rather, they take a grassroots approach. According to Insider, the biggest ad spends by corporations, small businesses, and all entities in between come in the form of digital ads, and they took up 71.8% of all advertising spending in 2022. This statistic is admittedly a bit staggering. Before researching for this paper, I thought that broadcast advertising through media-like television and radio was the cash cow of advertising, but I’m not really unique. When the public’s most recent exposure to ad costs was likely hearing about how high Super Bowl ads run, we can’t really act too surprised to learn that last year’s digital ad spend by all American businesses was $248.72 billion. When I think about it, considering that the daily screen time of the average American is nearly seven hours per day according to Comparitech, it's kind of a no-brainer that companies are pivoting away from the broadcast advertising space and towards the digital.

Many businesses, especially the big, scary, corporate kind, understand this concept of digital advertising and marketing very well, and as such they make the allotments of resources required to achieve it. But what happens when a very large, successful, and highly regarded company fails to successfully connect many of its future and current customers to something that they want? Well… I think we know exactly where this is going.

The Bud Light controversy is the latest of the nation’s recent unrests and boycotts. It’s likely that the brand’s handling of the issue-turned-crisis will be written in future advertising textbooks, printed, and cited when a witty professor wants to scare his students by only telling them what NOT to do when a marketing flop threatens to turn into a brand-image disaster.

This essay will cover the timeline of events regarding the Bud Light Brand Controversy. Additionally, although the timeline will likely be interesting enough, I will go into depth as to how the consequences of both these events and external happenings piled up on the brand. Next, I’m going to examine the weight of the crisis and analyze the once-popular brewer’s errors in its efforts to contain it. Finally, I’m going to connect how this controversy, and those like it, connect to the future of both advertising and public-facing speech as a whole.

So, what happened?

On April 1st, 2023, popular social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted on her Instagram account and showed her promoting brewer Bud Light for March Madness. Additionally, the post featured a cutaway of a specially-made Bud Light tall boy, customized to house a portrait of Dylan and a message from the brand that read “Congratulations on 365 days of girlhood.”

Almost instantly, the internet broke.

To those who haven’t yet heard, Dylan Mulvaney is a trans woman, and quite a popular trans woman at that. Her Instagram and Tiktok accounts have 1.8 million and 10.6 million followers at time of writing respectively, and they show no signs of slowing down her reign as one of the top LGBTQ influencers to date.

Mulvaney’s Instagram post quickly gained traction from the get go. As her post grew in popularity, so too did it grow in the groups and demographics that it reached. When the post finished going through the feeds of her main followers and demographics, the post found its way into the feeds of conservatives.

And if the internet was broken before, many of the conservatives that found this video absolutely shattered it.

For brevity’s sake, the following is a dry timeline of events regarding the crisis’s development. The fun analysis will come later:

March 23th

• Bud Light VP of Marketing Alissa Heinerscheid expresses the brand’s need for an inclusive marketing strategy to both move away from the brand’s “fratty” reputation and to attract younger audiences to drink Bud Light on the “Make Yourself At Home” podcast.

April 1st

• Dylan Mulvaney posts a video on her Instagram account. This video promotes the Bud Light brand while also highlighting a custom celebratory Bud Light tall boy.

April 3rd

• Kid Rock posts a YouTube video of him firing submachine gun rounds at cans of Bud Light. 

• Kid Rock’s video marks the start of the conservative boycott of Bud Light products.

April 4th

• Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch commented on the brand’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney in a statement to Buzzfeed News.

April 11th

• Mulvaney speaks out about the criticism she received on her partnership and video on the “Onward with Rosie O’Donnell” podcast.

April 14th

• The CEO of Anheuser-Busch, Brendan Whitworth, releases a statement on the controversy.

April 21st

• Bud Light announces VP of Marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, is taking a leave of absence.

• Anheuser-Busch announces its Executive VP of Marketing, Daniel Blake, is taking a leave of absence.

May 4th

• Anheuser-Busch stock finally loses a month-long buying volume support that it needed to keep its stock price up. AB stock starts its weeks-long downtrend and erases the company’s year-to-date stock price increase.

June 3rd

• Modelo Especial officially overtakes Bud Light at first in daily US retail dollar sales.

June 28th

• Anheuser-Busch CEO joins CBS Mornings to “discuss the boycott, his company’s response and its comeback strategy.”

June 29th

• Dylan Mulvaney speaks out about her experiences of harassment and intense criticism since her April 1 post. She notes that Bud Light has not reached out to her.

July 7th

• Bud Light drops below 10th place in daily US retail dollar sales.

How the Bricks Kept Piling Up

What this timeline shows is that Bud Light, as a multi-billion-dollar brand, allowed an arguably small marketing flop to grow into a full-fledged brand-image crisis. In doing so, they also alienated two very important customer demographics: older conservatives, and the on-average younger LGBT community and its allies. 

Let’s analyze the timeline. Bud Light’s marketing team sent a sponsorship package to a popular trans influencer in order to 1) grow an inclusive marketing strategy, 2) move away from the brand’s “fratty” image, and 3) reach out and attract younger audiences. We know this because, nine days before Mulvaney posted her Instagram video, Bud Light’s Vice President of Marketing expressed their intention to do something that achieved these exact three things.

In plainer English, Bud Light’s marketing team wanted to appeal to younger audiences. Did it work? Yes and no. Here’s why:

What Bud Light’s Partnership Accomplished

First thing’s first, Bud Light accomplished their goal of appealing to younger audiences.

Right from the get go, the beer brand found themselves in between a rock and a hard place… sort of. This is not because of anything they did per se, but simply due the audience that it pandered to. The alcoholic beverages industry is tricky because the whole industry is regulated. Additionally, all of the industry’s customers must meet an age requirement before being legally able to buy from it. This creates a dilemma where, if an alcoholic beverages brand creates an advertisement or marketing campaign that is specifically meant to encourage younger audiences to try their product, then the brand must project any initial gain it might make into the next several years. 

The modification is that the brand would start to see gains from younger customers in the next few years, and thus the rock would likely fall away and let it move freely. This is a plausible strategy, given that the customers that were pandered to still want to buy from the brand.

And after the brewer’s handling of the situation, that would be a bold assumption to make. 

What Bud Light’s Partnership Didn’t Accomplish

The crazy thing, while you can well infer by now, is not exactly how or who Bud Light chose for their partnership; rather, what still and irrevocably will lie in history as aberrantly heinous is how the brand handled the issue and let it become a full-on crisis.

1. PR Consistency

If you look to the timeline and look past Kid Rock’s now-famous beer-target-practice video, you’ll see that Anheuser-Busch fielded a statement on the partnership to Buzzfeed News. It’s actually a good statement. It reads:

“Anheuser-Busch works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics. From time to time we produce unique commemorative cans for fans and for brand influencers, like Dylan Mulvaney. This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.”

Anheuser-Busch’s Statement About the Brewer’s Partnership with Dylan Mulvaney

As you can see, this does everything that a statement ought to do. Anheuser-Busch’s statement: 1) addresses the root cause: the partnership; 2) talks about why they did what they did; 3) shows how it was well-intended; and 4) doesn’t apologize. And it didn’t seem that Anheuser-Busch was taking its second step carelessly, as the brewer released a statement 10 days later from its CEO, Brendan Whitworth. It says the following: 

“As the CEO of a company founded in America’s heartland more than 165 years ago, I am responsible for ensuring every consumer feels proud of the beer we brew.

We’re honored to be part of the fabric of this country. Anheuser-Busch employs more than 18,000 people and our independent distributors employ an additional 47,000 valued colleagues. We have thousands of partners, millions of fans and a proud history supporting our communities, military, first responders, sports fans and hard-working Americans everywhere. 

We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.

My time serving this country taught me the importance of accountability and the values upon which America was founded: freedom, hard work and respect for one another. As CEO of Anheuser-Busch, I am focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage. 

I care deeply about this country, this company, our brands and our partners. I spend much of my time traveling across America, listening to and learning from our customers, distributors and others.

Moving forward, I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers across our nation.”

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth’s Statement On the Controversy Surrounding Bud Light’s Partnership with Dylan Mulvaney

Brendan Whitworth’s statement struck a well-meaning and responsible ethos with America, and it seemed that the brewer-turned household blacklist name had reached the climax of its 15 days of fame.

But, alas, all good things come to an end.

One week later, Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch announced that their senior marketing execs, Alissa Heinerscheid, and Daniel Blake, would be taking a “leave of absence.” This ousting of the very people in charge of the Mulvaney envelope-push sent a message that the brands were double-backing on their once-firm stance on the partnership.

Then? What happened next?

Absolute silence… for a whole month.

Then, out of nowhere, the ethological and seemingly responsible CEO appeared on a CBS Mornings Interview to “discuss the boycott, his company’s response and its comeback strategy.” And discuss he did, but address he didn’t.

Throughout his interview, Whitworth was, admittedly, bombarded with questions about the rationale behind the interview, whose side he and his company were on, and how both Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light would move on from the boycott, given its bombastic impact on their sales. To these questions, Whitworth gave zero actual answers. 

The interview consisted of the former Marine not walking, but running away from the questions asked. The direct answers that he did provide towed the ideological line so tightly you’d be able to breathe and it would snap. It felt scripted. 

What happened to Brendan’s commitment to “work tirelessly” for his company and his nation? Could he at least provide some information as to how the company felt about their corporate partnerships, especially with the person whose partnership helped create this debacle?

No, they couldn’t. Because neither Bud Light nor Anheuser-Busch wanted to associate with Dylan Mulvaney anymore.

2. A Relationship with Dylan Mulvaney

If you look back to our glorious timeline, you’ll see that, under the date April 11, Dylan Mulvaney talked with Rosie O’Donnell on the “Onward” podcast to discuss her criticism and the backlash she’s received from the Bud Light crisis. This was definitely valid, because, though Citizens United wants you to think differently, people are different from multinational corporations. And individuals both feel and are less protected from criticism more-so than corporations do/are.

What this did to crush what was left of the company’s washed-up reputation was catastrophic. It proved to the public what many of the older conservatives were balking and the LGBTQ community was fearing from the start: that Dylan Mulvaney was being used as nothing more but an ethological marketing ploy.

Remember what we discussed about how Bud Light’s campaign would end up being a success if those they marketed too would still buy their beers? Well, Dylan’s post threw that notion out the window and shattered the glass for good measure.

Now, not only did the aging conservative base not want anything to do with the brand – something that it could reasonably live with – but so did the very generation and demographics that it was marketing to.

What a day that was for Bud Light.

Comparing A Like Scenario

As weird, fun, and crazy as Bud Light’s situation is, it’s hardly unique. During the little episode that Bud Light was having (and I mean ‘little’ like old Southern women mean “bless your heart”), Target was having a little crisis of its own. Two things had been revealed that had caused both the brand’s right-leaning and religious customers to erupt in a boycott ferver:

1. The upscale department store had introduced “tuck-friendly” swimwear for young trans girls, and 

2. internal communications showed that Target executives were planning on moving back their Pride and LGBTQ-facing products back in the store, citing that they wanted to avoid a “Bud Light moment.”

There was an absolute uproar at these realizations; however, as one can remember, the press and talk about the brand eventually died down, and that was not a coincidence. That was a direct result of how Target handled the PR issue.

An Axios article posted early this month compares the two issues perfectly, and I recommend that you read it. They showed the following chart which shows how views and watches of coverage on Bud Light compared with views and watches of coverage on Target:

This chart is jarring. It shows how the Bud Light crisis wasn’t just huge in its reach, but that reach was prolonged; whereas Target’s crisis very dramatically rises in views but then tapers off. 

This eventual loss-of-energy is due to one thing: Target’s steadfastness in its values. Evidence of this lies in the brand’s CEO stating the following on Fortune’s Leadership Next Podcast:

“When we think about purpose at Target, it’s really about helping all the families, and that "all" word is really important. Most of America shops at Target, so we want to do the right thing to support families across the country. I think those are just good business decisions, and it’s the right thing for society, and it’s the great thing for our brand. The things we’ve done from a DE&I (diversity, equity, and inclusion) standpoint, it’s adding value. It’s helping us drive sales, it’s building greater engagement with both our teams and our guests, and those are just the right things for our business today.”

Target CEO Brian Cornell on the brand’s “tuck friendly” swimwear PR issue.

The statement shown is steadfast, shows good intent, and doesn’t apologize. From a PR standpoint, it’s perfection in words. After holding to its values like that, it’s no wonder that Target is still feeling nothing more than a mosquito bite on its sales revenues. 

What This Means For The Future of Advertising and Public Speech

Though one may not agree with Target’s products, brand ideology, etc.. one cannot say that it isn’t a mastermind in handling public outrage regarding its practices/products. They know a thing or two because they’ve seen a thing or two. And that may well be why Bud Light is testing so poorly in its crisis communications. When the CEO of a multibillion dollar company was hired years after the brand’s latest (and reasonably minor) public controversy, you can’t expect either him or the company under his direction to act with superior tact and wisdom while under such intense public scrutiny. 

But then again, Anheuser-Busch is a 171 year old corporation. If it fumbled this situation so badly, then other, and much smaller, corporations and companies can do the same. So what can we learn from this fiasco?

1. Brands need a better understanding of their customer base

It seems that many miscalculate the actual issue behind Bud Light’s little PR monster. Contrary to popular belief, the base of Bud Light’s issue was not its partnership with Dylan Mulvaney. Bud Light has been sponsoring LGBTQ events, celebrities and influencers for the better part of 20 years, and many either praised the brand, didn’t notice, or didn’t care. 

The issue was that Bud Light assumed that, especially in the charged discussion regarding transgender people, those options would still apply. And even after it turned out that those options weren’t on the table anymore, they assumed that their right-wing customer base would let it slide with an apology. This was a terrible mistake.  

The Conservative Base

While it may not be a surprise to many, it is worth noting that conservatives, many being older, make up a solid if not very substantial portion of every beer market in the United States. These older conservatives hold power, both morally and authoritatively, in family structures. What’s more, they typically still hold the belief that companies are able to be held accountable by the people that buy from them. This means that, if an older member(s) of a conservative family don’t like what a brand is doing, and either they or their family buys from that brand, then they can not only boycott that brand in a show of faith in their belief of accountability, but they can also have their family do so.

The brand also failed to capture how powerful the conservative base is regarding established companies like itself. A study from New York University found that conservatives favor established companies and brands over “generic and new brands.” This means that conservatives’ choice of beer lies within the established big-name brands and, while the number hasn’t been quantified, it can be inferred that their influence in this “big-name, long-standing brewer” market is superior to liberal or otherwise non-conservative demographics.

Bud Light, as it grew in its boldness, assumed that it would be able to live with this underestimated loss, especially since more and more teenagers and 20-somethings within Generation Z are finding their own beliefs and are able to “negotiate differences better than perhaps any prior generation.” Essentially, it assumed that the rapport it would gain from Gen Z would displace any sour taste left in the older conservatives’ mouths. However, it failed to include the fact that Gen Zers and the LGBTQ community value something more than simple brand currency and modernity. They value consistency.

2. Customers Value Consistency

I’m grouping both the Generation Z base and the LGBTQ base together because both bases, on average, hold statistically similar political beliefs.

The gamble Bud Light took on Generation Z displacing the aging conservative base likely would have worked. After all, many were thrilled that a trans influencer was gaining sponsorship opportunities from big-name brands. However, the brand shot itself in the foot twice when 1) Brendan Whitworth towed the ideological lines in his CBS Mornings interview, and when 2) Dylan Mulvaney spoke out about being ghosted by Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch. 

People don’t like being lied to or misled, especially people who you are trying to persuade to buy from you. This is a basic tenet of advertising. If you want people to buy from you, then you ought to tell them the truth about your product in a creative manner. Bud Light’s pandering not only alienated aging conservatives, but its “cut and run” crisis strategy also alienated those in Generation Z.

3. Brands Need Better Rapport With Partners, Especially Influencers

Influencers today carry more weight with the American public than ever before. Thus, we see marketing subcategories like influencer relations growing alongside these micro-celebrities. Here are some key statistics about influencer relations to keep in mind:

1. In 2022, the influencer relations industry expanded from $13.8 billion to $16.4 billion, an increase of 18.84%. 

2. For every $1 that a company spends on influencers and influencer relations, it receives a $5.20 return on its investment (ROI).

3. The industry is expected to grow by another 28.65%, to $21.1 billion, by the end of 2023. 

It’s no question then that, as the business of influencing people through a digitized word-of-mouth evolves, so should a brand’s handling of their relationships with the influencers: the people who market for these brands.

Bud Light’s aforementioned “cut-and-run” crisis strategy not only hurt their own credibility with its customers, but it also damaged its reputation within the influencer and adjacent influencer relations communities. Think about it as a friend betraying you. Would you want to trust that friend with your money, secrets, and friendship if they had just proven to be irresponsible with another person’s money, secrets, and friendship? The answer is no. Such goes for influencers. As mentioned before, influencers are simply people, and 99% of the time, they aren’t protected by a corporate veil when something goes awry when a partnership or action that they partake in turns sour. Brands need to not just better understand but evolve in their dealings with influencers. If the prior numbers do not lend enough credence to this point, then I would ask you to open up your TikTok and scroll a few times. You will inevitably run into at least one advertisement performed by an internet influencer. All to say, both the market for and opportunities within influencer relations is huge simply because of influencers’ pervasive presence on social media. But, just as we saw with Bud Light, influencers not only hold amazing power to bring people to a brand, but also to drive people away from a brand if it’s burned them before.

Conclusion

If you haven’t gathered it yet, The fall of Bud Light’s brand prowess wasn’t just terrible, it was preventable. No matter what one believes about either the brand, Dylan Mulvaney, or the partnership between the two, one must look past it and analyze objectively to fully grasp the situation and to learn well from it. When I look at this debacle, though I’ve expounded in words more befit of a formal declaration than an analytical essay, I’ve found that it boils down to three tenets of social interaction and self preservation:

1. Understand those that you deal with, both in business and in personal matters.

2. Be consistent with your words and actions. These reflect your true nature. Do not lie by omission.

3. Make a point to obtain, maintain, and evolve a good reputation between you and both your business partners and peers. “A good reputation is better than gold.”