The Key Takeaways from the Bud Light Fiasco
Senior leadership at Bud Light has no connection whatsoever to their target market or any understanding of the importance of tactful marketing.
Someone at Anheuser-Busch HQ must have forgotten that we don’t have mandates on which beers you must buy. What other reason could someone in an executive leadership position believe that making trans “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney the icon of a Bud Light campaign would be good for sales?
Advertising is an important tool for a company to market its products and services. If you’re in charge of marketing, you use advertising as a tool to persuade your market to act (e.g. buy your beer). Advertising is NOT supposed to generate a massive public backlash in which, as of this writing, parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev S.A. has lost over $5 billion of market capitalization since April 7 and there are unsubstantiated, anecdotal claims of sales in the field falling over 50 percent.
The promotional activities of Anheuser-Busch’s VP of Marketing for Bud Light are a perfect example of a disconnect problem afflicting a broad swath of senior corporate leadership: Almost zero connection to the market and a total failure to communicate insightfully to that market.
Particularly in large companies such as Anheuser-Busch, highly credentialed executives and senior managers are making these stunning mistakes that run completely counter to what we have known for years about marketing. Creating and sustaining demand for a product or service is the core goal here, not to push a hot-button culture war agenda item in an effort to be “more inclusive.” Was the lack of inclusivity a quantifiable problem with Bud Light? Was it really necessary to provoke your beer-drinking customer base with the face of a transgender activist? You really have to wonder how much value today’s Ivy League MBA degrees really contain.
How can so-called corporate leadership be this out of touch with their market? Have they not already learned the lesson from Gillette, who famously ran an advertisement showing men acting aggressively toward women and needing to be “held accountable?” The company posted an apology message (now deleted) but the damage was done; Gillette parent company Proctor & Gamble ultimately posted a net loss of $5.24 billion and had to take an $8 billion write-down on crumbling sales across its brand portfolio.
Attack the core members of your market by suggesting they are rude and aggressive toward women, then your sales sharply decline and you lose billions. Coincidence?
Make a controversial transgender activist the spokesperson for your brand, alienating all of your customers who do not support such activism, then your sales sharply decline and you lose billions. Another coincidence?
And now, it is reported that this Bud Light marketing partnership was launched without the approval of Anheuser-Busch senior executives, which I find highly unlikely. It is said that the decision to include Dylan Mulvaney in the campaign was taken by a "low-level marketing staffer.” Another example of incompetent leadership is when nobody at the top assumes any accountability for poor decision making.
Given the high-profile financial and reputational pounding Bud Light is taking, perhaps this debacle will mark a turning point among corporate ranks in which they begin to move away from politically charged and economically destructive marketing campaigns and more toward advertising and promotions to influence markets that actually exist and do not piss off vast legions of people with alternative purchase choices.
In the meantime, the boycotts of Bud Light (and the rest of InBev’s brands) will certainly motivate beer drinkers to choose other brands of beer. It’s a big brand market out there. Choose wisely.
And as always, please drink responsibly.