Bad Brew
What we can learn from Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light Marketing Debacle
By Beau Falgout, Managing Director
By Beau Falgout
Managing Director
Anheuser-Busch’s recent marketing campaign featuring a transgender social media influencer, Dylan Mulvaney – which was intended to make the brand appeal to a broader audience – turned into a debacle and reputational crisis for the company. Like many crises, this one was greatly exacerbated by the company’s response to the initial backlash and could have been mitigated or even avoided with a more effective and empathetic communications strategy rooted in articulation of corporate values.
For those unfamiliar with the details, in April, Anheuser-Busch launched a Bud Light-branded promotional contest via Mulvaney’s Instagram account. Almost immediately, the company faced a strong and widespread wave of criticism from the public, business partners, and other stakeholders that spanned the political spectrum and both sides of the transgender rights issue. This topic has divided the country like other social and political issues (such as abortion, gun control, COVID vaccines and mask mandates, and ESG initiatives), and Anheuser-Busch should have been aware of how the public would react to the marketing campaign involving a prominent transgender influencer and prepared to respond when the fallout occurred.
A recent Wall Street Journal article by reporter Jennifer Maloney does an excellent job detailing where the company went wrong following Mulvaney’s Instagram post, which, according to Maloney, angered “pretty much everyone: core Bud Light consumers, supporters and opponents of transgender rights, wholesalers, retailers, bar owners and company staff.”
As Maloney notes, the company’s initial posture towards the intense backlash was silence, which was then followed by a widely-panned statement “about bringing people together, prompting criticism from all sides for both waiting too long to respond and also not taking a clear stand.”
The fallout has since intensified, resulting in:
The company placing the executives responsible for the campaign on leave, a decision that has been scrutinized by Anheuser Busch employees and framed by some as an apparent surrender to the public criticism;
The Human Rights Campaign criticizing Anheuser Busch, saying it didn’t do enough to stand with Dylan Mulvaney amid the uproar;
Some conservatives openly boycotting Bud Light;
Senators Ted Cruz and Marsh Blackburn calling for an investigation into Bud Light’s partnership with Mulvaney; and
A significant decrease in Bud Light sales.
Over the past several weeks, Anheuser Busch’s leadership team has scrambled to devise and deploy an apparent rehabilitation plan. Despite these efforts, according to Maloney, while Anheuser Busch executives told wholesalers that Bud Light’s market share losses had stabilized, “…several wholesalers said Bud Light sales and market share in their markets were still falling.”
What can we learn from Anheuser-Busch’s missteps?
Like it or not, the reality is that corporations are vulnerable when they take a stand on controversial social or political issues, and they need to be very well prepared before taking on those issues.
To do this effectively, companies should develop a communications strategy and scenario plan for navigating inevitable backlash while preserving credibility. This is best achieved when the plan’s messaging stays true to and articulates companies’ corporate values.
If a company chooses not to take a stand on a hot-button issue, it also should be prepared to say why and manage criticism from key audiences who increasingly expect companies and their executives to publicly state their positions.
"Hope” is not a sustainable strategy. Anheuser Busch stayed quiet and hoped the boycotts and scrutiny would blow over. The company lost an enormous amount of credibility and was forced to act quickly, which is inherently difficult for large publicly traded companies.
The way a company responds to a crisis says a lot about its corporate values and can provide an opportunity to enhance perception around those values. How a crisis is addressed tends to have a longer-lasting impact than the crisis itself.
Once a company has lost its credibility, it is a long and hard road to regain it. As Warren Buffett rightly pointed out, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."