Bud Light is tripling its advertising spend this summer with its “Easy to Drink, Easy to Enjoy” campaign, but until it apologies, it won’t win back customers, marketing experts tell The Wall Street Journal.
Many Bud Light drinkers were initially confused and then insulted by its marketing campaign featuring transgender personality Dylan Mulvaney. Parent company Anheuser-Busch’s silence then infuriated the LGBTQ+ community, to boot. That led to further debates about its previous campaigns using frat-boy humor.
“The Bud Light shopper who’s left the brand has zero interest in coming back,” says Bump Williams, president and CEO of Bump Williams Consulting. “So, you can spend all the money you want, but until you fix the problem—apologize and admit you made a mistake—it’s wasted money.”
Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth and Global Chief Marketing Officer Marcel Marcondes have been anything but apologetic. In fact, they've even doubled down on their LBGTQ+ and social activism.
In late June—three months after Bud Light’s Mulvaney ad campaign debuted and with sales down as much as 25% many weeks—Whitworth vowed Bud Light will continue to support the LGBTQ community.
“There is a big social conversation taking place right now, and big brands are right in the middle of it,” Whitworth said on “CBS Mornings.” “It's not just our industry or Bud Light. It's happening in retail. It's happening in fast food.”
CMO Marcondes, as he collected the Creative Marketer of the Year award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June, said, “When things get divisive and controversial so easily, it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers, for us to be very humble.”
Anheuser-Busch In Bev, Marcondes said, has continued to remind him and other top executives “to really celebrate and appreciate every customer that loves our brands, in a way that can make them be tougher, not apart.”
Although Bud Light ads appeared 3,400 times on national television between June 1 and June 30, AB In Bev, the world’s largest brewer, reported Thursday that revenue in the United States declined by 10.5% in the second quarter from a year earlier, “primarily due to the volume decline of Bud Light.”
In the five months since the Mulvaney debacle began, once loyal Bud Light customers have boycotted the brand, and sales have plummeted. U.S. retail store sales of the beer brand were down 26.1% in the week ended July 15 and 26.8% in the week ended July 22, according to Bump Williams Consulting.
Stefanie Boyer, professor of marketing at Bryant University, says Bud Light’s advertising and marketing impact may turn around the brand eventually, noting that the effects of national beer campaigns take time.
Bud Light’s summer campaign is also aimed at a broader audience, which is a tougher strategy than direct marketing, Boyer adds.
Bud Light has also been running promotions, including a $15 rebate on large packs of beer during the July 4 weekend and a $10,000 weekly giveaway.
Jenn Litz-Kirk, executive editor of Beer Business Daily, says Bud Light had no choice but to increase its advertising spending, “especially as distributors have been clamoring for them to ‘do something!’”
“The summer campaign at the very least represents a commitment to the brand after the Mulvaney incident,” Litz-Kirk rationalizes.
Bud Light is no longer the No. 1, but the fourth best-selling beer in the U.S. In the four weeks ending July 22, Modelo Especial accounted for 8.8% of U.S. retail store beer sales, and Bud Light, 6.8%.
The “Easy to Drink, Easy to Enjoy” ads trying to turn that tide around, meanwhile, show beer drinkers in summertime mishaps like falling out of a hammock or burning their bare feet on scorching asphalt—but still enjoying their Bud Light.