Anheuser-Busch is beginning to realize the scale of the controversy with their latest partnership.
The historic beer franchise has found itself purging billions of dollars on behalf of its stockholders.
Now reports indicate that leadership is starting to sweat bullets with this latest claim.
Anheuser-Busch wipes over $6 billion from their market cap after Dylan Mulvaney stunt
Anheuser-Busch’s most popular beverage, Bud Light, has put the beer giant in hot water with their latest marketing partnership.
Controversial transgender social media influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, announced the partnership on April 1 of this year.
Mulvaney has grown to fame over the past year as he documented his first 365 days of “girlhood.”
He’s drawn frequent criticism for his antics from conservatives while collecting marketing dollars from a variety of brands.
Bud Light was just the latest brand to partner with Mulvaney, but this one struck a nerve with the Bud Light customer base.
It led to mass calls of boycotts that quickly shifted toward a collapsing stock price following the holiday weekend.
The stock price has dropped by over 5 percent, which translates to more than $6 billion for the company shareholders.
VP of Marketing at the brand said they were trying to make the brand more “inclusive”
The company’s Harvard-educated VP of Marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, discussed the allegedly failing Bud Light brand just days before the announcement of the partnership with Mulvaney.
She said Bud Light, which is the number one beer in America, was “in decline for a long time.”
She warned that if the company didn’t find its way into the hands of more young people then “there will be no future for Bud Light.”
She said the key to success would be to shift away from a “fratty, out of touch” brand toward one that is more “inclusive.”
Heinerscheid went on to explain that the brand needed to embrace “shifting the tone” and “having a campaign that’s truly inclusive, and feels lighter and brighter and different, and appeals to women and to men.”
Ultimately she wanted to cure Bud Light of its “hangover” and try “another approach.”
Source says that Anheuser-Busch knows they made a “mistake”
When the public outrage started, the Bud Light press team issued a statement defending the partnership and brushing it off as simply the production of “unique commemorative cans” for an influencer.
They said that it happens “from time to time,” trying to ease concerns.
They said, “Anheuser-Busch works with hundreds of influencers across [their] brands as one of the ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics.”
Now that the brand has lost billions of dollars for their shareholders, it seems like they’re starting to change their tune.
An unnamed source told the Daily Wire that the arrangement with Mulvaney was never approved by anyone at a “senior level” but rather “some low-level marketing staffer who helps manage the hundreds of influencer engagements they do.”
The source said that “it was a mistake” for this to happen.
Before It’s Banned will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this story before it’s banned.
