Beer analysts are saying that Bud Light is still struggling with the boycott that has reduced its sale by a whopping 28% over the four weeks leading up to Dec. 9 — and heading to the all-important New Year’s sale period. The tragic irony for the company is that Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, sought to dismantle Bud Light’s “fratty reputation.” She succeeded. It is now the symbol of woke companies for many and consumers seem to be treating the company as a vehicle to express their opposition to the social and political campaigns of companies from Disney to Nike.
Notably, U.S. beer shipments dropped by more than 5% over the first nine months of 2023, reflecting a trend among younger voters away from alcohol. However, Bud Light appears to be off the charts as consumers continue to send a message by buying other brands.
The timing is critical. According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a quarter of the $49-billion-a-year distilled spirits industry’s profits come between Thanksgiving and the New Year. The continued struggle of Bud Light during this period could magnify the losses and the message in the market.
The message appears to be getting through. Corporate executives have long yielded to demands for greater political and social agendas despite indicators that these campaigns were driving away business. That is changing as shareholders object to subsidizing campaigns unconnected to products. Most recently, Disney appeared to acknowledge that its own campaigns were undermining sales and alienating consumers.
It is the invisible hand of Adam Smith at work. However, this is more of a backhand for Bud Light, which has tried to distance itself from the earlier campaign. The problem is that many consumers now view the company as a symbol of this struggle between companies and the public. Some are seeking to “hoist the wretch” to warn other companies. It seems that Bud Light is now that wretch.
For conservatives, the 2023 victories are miniscule indeed. This brings a very small smile to my face. Huge mountains to climb to fight against America-hating, and humanity hating leftists. It’s not just America, it is worldwide. Satan is alive and breathing life into this mess…for now.
Prior to the 1970’s when Budweiser went national the nation drank mostly locally produced brews. The national beer push brought with it advertising on tv, table ads in restaurants, neon signs, and fleets of trucks. It overwhelmed the budgets of the little guys.
To be cool and modern, you had to drink Bud. The local beers were run out of business in favor of mass produced swill. The dying labels were bought up by two-tank operations (regular and light) and sold as discount beers that all tasted the same because they were, and they truly sucked.
Today, we are seeing a gradual return to a balanced market where carefully made prideful beers have a market, frat party kegs still have a home, and rest of us have a choice.
1-800-BarrysBagODiks
Txt: Shemalehermaphrodite
Get a free crack pipe
Marxists used to complain that multinational corporations were the bane of the world’s existence. Now suddenly any multinational corporation that tries to impose DIE on its customers is an angel that must be nurtured and protected (just look at some of Anon’s comments below). My how things have changed in commie world.
Oldmanfromkansas,
Well said and good point.
Americans don’t like behavior forcing, just bring better mouse traps to the marketplace if you’re seeking a better bottom line.
It didn’t help that the CEO went on TV in a damage control effort and bombed by insisting that the company has always prized “inclusivity.” And it turns out the CEO had paid a consultant to coach him on that answer.
Knowing with virtual certainty that beer drinkers will NEVER give up drinking beer (not voluntarily anyway), the geniuses at Bud Light had the ALMOST-perfect strategy. The ONLY flaw was the failure to consider that beer-drinkers have more than a 100 other low-ball brand choices available, and that despite what beer “connoisseurs” would want people to believe, after the first beer, they all taste pretty much the same.
People drink the first beer for taste, but anyone that drinks more than one beer isn’t drinking for taste — they’re drinking for the alcohol content — aka the BUZZ — and would probably drink gasoline if no beer was available.
In other words: despite what billions of dollars worth of Madison Avenue advertising would brain wash people into believing, beer is NOT a beverage for people with finely-tuned palates. Beverages for people with refined “taste” don’t come in cans and aren’t sold by the twelve-pack. Rather, such beverages — wine, whiskey, etc. — are neatly packaged in bottles adorned with labels cleverly designed to flatter the booze-hound buying them into believing that they have superior tastes and a true appreciation of the “finer” things in life (delusional as all the nonsense may be).
I’m sorry if that isn’t what people want to hear this close to New Year’s Eve, the holiest day of the year for booze-hounds worldwide.
@Anon
So true! After the first drink of any kind the rest are basically swill, and don’t get me wrong, I love a good beer or wine. That is actually telling too: all things being equal, this boycott was aimed squarely at the fool that concocted the campaign, and the fool(s) that green-lit it.
James,
Dont forget the fact that in light of the Bud Light fiasco, InBev had to sell off 8 of their brands to a Canadian pot company along with the huge losses they have incurred.
A German bank analyst assessment thinks AhB InBev will have permanently lost up to 28% of it consumer base.
How marvelous!
@Upstate
Oh, I do recall. The pot thing is a separate issue, and I guess we’ll get to that as time goes by (and trust me, we will have to. Millennials and Gen Z seem to be absolutely *intent* on repeating the mistakes of the past, due in large part to the fact that the woke among them they are clinically stupid, and likely clinical narcissists as well, and will not read a book or listen to anyone that doesn’t hurt their tender feelings. All drugs used to be legal, there are very good reasons they aren’t anymore), but yes – it is glorious.
In a word: good! Puerile woke idiocy was never going to be sustainable, and these companies should absolutely bear the brunt of their pandering. It is past time the woke generations learn that the world and its people did not spring into existence the day they were born merely to please and placate them, and that their ideas are generally juvenile and moronic. Hoping this is finally the beginning of the death knell for what began in earnest with the unicorn era.
She was trying to rebrand a beer that is iconic among working men by a campaign of inclusivity? Why rebrand an iconic beer? If it was dying, let it die and move on. She was working for the largest beer maker in the world. Why not leave a successful, though declining, iconic brand alone? This was incredibly myopic on her and her team’s part or it was an intended as a deliberate finger in the eye of the Bud Light demographic?
Our local brewers make incredible beer and are always coming up with creative blends and brands. I buy from local brewers 100% now. Local purchases from small companies bypasses the mega corporations and supports local communities. We would do well, in my view, to spend as much as possible with local small businesses and avoid lining the pockets of Zillionaires like Jeff Bezos.
@E.M.
I agree – money spent locally grows within a community – it’s part of the reason it’s been so problematic to have such large numbers of illegal immigrants sending billions generated here to other countries (evidence that ‘wealth redistribution’ is a recipe for disaster – economics are really not a leftist strong suit).
However, an alarming number of small businesses did not make it through the lockdown, and even larger ones still struggle with supply chains and theft. This has ended up pushing people to the likes of Amazon for things they used to just go out and buy. What does one buy locally when nothing is on offer?
That said, woke ‘disruption’ absolutely deserves the middle finger it’s getting.
E.M.
I too try to support local or independent companies as much as possible.
One of the great thing about the Bud Light charlie fox, is it made everyone aware of all the InBev products to avoid.
@Upstate @E.M.
Slightly OT, but this is something that cracks me up/horrifies me about the woke and uber left, particulary the young’uns: they very rightly tout the benefits of local business and circulating dollars in community, but their tiny minds can’t take it out of microcosm and then apply it to a nation (a la Trump). Apparently to them the fed is somehow different, a magic money hydrant, or dollar orchard in their flawed understanding. The genius just never stops with some people. 🙄
As I mentioned yesterday woke leftist hate capitalism and free markets.
This is a great example of failed wokeism.
Pander to stupid woke ideals, watch normal people reject it. It is simply awesome.
Just for S&Gs on Christmas Eve day, I went into a local gas station “beer cave.” A lot of the supply was bought up, except for Bud Light! There was a stack against the wall as tall as me, I am 6’1″. And another chest high in the middle.
The consumer has spoken: Go woke? Go BROKE!
@Upstate
It really is. That’s the kicker right there, and I posted it the other day: these people do not want to have to compete. Life experience has already shown them that their idiotic ideas are boosheet nobody wants, and rather than adapt and grow for the benefit of themselves and everyone around them, no, they must destroy whatever in their tiny minds made them feel that way. Good job, their parents. If any of these idjits had good ideas and could implement them, they would just be prosperous and along their way and we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and that is a fact. Choose whatever channel or institution you like for the failure of basic human functionality, but it is what it is. Saw this today, and it speaks volumes. And I am someone that is actually in favor of people being responsible with their child rearing:
https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2023/12/27/depopulation-folks-are-at-it-again-n2391150
Re-branded Queer Beer. It’s not ever coming back.
I went back to my Cold War Beer……….Heineken.
As a marketing manager, my job was to identify the target audience for my product. Once identified, that target audience is catered to in an effort to increase sales and thus profits. This gal for Budweiser did none of that. She opted for five minutes of fame in a woke world. She has no supporters from that world and she destroyed an icon. Slow clap, for the most unintelligent marketing decision ever made.
Elle, it seems you went to a school that taught something useful, whereas Alissa attended an Ivy League university.
@Elle
I’ve worked in this field as well, and during the time I did, though I understood the logic, I never embraced it. The breakouts were never the campaigns that followed data or fads; not ever (and our studio was very successful). That is what the woke do not seem to understand: they are data and fads, they are binary thinking that embraces stereotype, and the future is not built on that foundation of sand. Hence: they will never actually create anything, just regurgitate, repurpose, and repackage. It is a BIG problem with modern Silicon Valley, the idiotic notion of big data, and the idiotic notion of AI based on said big data and whatever follows that line of reasoning by unethical humans. After web 2.0, with profit and power being the determinants, we are on the road to hell if we do not wrest back control, and we live in the one country on earth where we CAN. Stop. Listening. To. The. Left. The party of JFK has been r*ped, burned, and buried. You cannot belong to a party that no longer exits, and further, has been ground into paste by bad actors and ideals that party used to find abhorrent. Vote blue no matter who is about as good as saying, ‘I have not paid attention to anything whatsoever but my own personal bubble of comfort for the past 30+ years.’.
Adam Smith’s, “invisible hand” . . . aka buyer’s demand . . . is ignored at a company’s peril as Disney, Bud Light, Pepsi and Trevor Noah can attest.
These trends are extremely odd. Billionaires, millionaires, obscenely wealthy Americans who lean Left, adore Hunter Biden’s dahdee. Surely they are ready, willing and able to share their wealth, just like their sacred text, Communist Manifesto states.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Alice Walton
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/nine-of-the-2020-forbes-ten-wealthiest-americans-are-democrat-affiliated-liberal-megadonors/
Obscenely wealthy Americans support the Left because it is working for them financially. Everything these people do is based on calculation. They NEVER act on sincere beliefs. You don’t become obscenely wealthy by being an idiot, do you?
I don’t think that it’s as dire as all that. There was no actual boycott, because a boycott would imply that Budweiser was being pressured to do something, and once they did it, the boycott would end. That’s not what occurred, and it’s not going to end. For whatever reasons, the company decided to align its brand with a social posture. Many do not agree with that posture. By ordering the brand in a bar, or carrying it to the checkout counter, a customer would associate themselves with that posture. And many do not want to. So they pick something else. Bud Light didn’t really stand out as a great beer. It was an acceptable product at a reasonable price, just like countless other brands. So people pick something else. Unfortunately for the company, the kind of consumer who supports their position are not the kind of people who consume moderately-priced domestic beer. But Joe Sixpack ain’t buying it, and never will again I think.
Well said. Any very on point!
All Inbev brands are anathema to me
At this point it isn’t so much a boycott as it is a cultural revulsion of woke and prog/left ideology in general. The tide has turned on this movement of such. Has snyone seen or heard from dylan or that VP that started sll this? They should be on the vanguard of this movement if it were gaining momentum but Disney, Target snd others are suffereing the same fate. This is a good sign that the “woke” are over-exposing their true selves.
Used to drink Bud Light, it will be a long time before even thinking about buying again
“Holy 15 minutes of fame’, Batman!!” It appears that here aren’t enough alphabet people switching to the product to make up the shortfall and support the cause for their champion whose face is noticeably absent from our flatscreens.
Yes, I was wondering the same thing – where is that little she-man hiding. I hope he didn’t go to Gaza to support the hamas terrorists!!!
I think this is a good warning for arrogant corporations. Bud Light “Fratty” in what world. Did this person even care what the customers thought? Insane. Did she know what they drank and why. People can decide what beer they like to drink and determine that themselves. It’s Budweisers job to fit their product to what their customers like. Beer distillers ceased to lead social experiments since the 1920s and that little Beer Hall uprising in Munich, which sort of launched the career of the head of the National Socialist German Workers party.