On April 1, 2023, the controversial transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney went to Instagram to advertise Bud Light beer, while the beer manufacturer promoted her match for the March Madness Basketball Tour of the National Athletics Athletics.
In the clip, Mulvaney, 27, sat behind Bud Light’s cans, drinking from one while postponing a competition to earn $ 15,000 and, at the same time, stating complete ignorance of what Mars Madness was about even what sport it included.
But as Anson Fericks explains in “The Last Call for Bud Light: The Fall and Future of America’s favorite beer” (threshold editions), promotion caused immediate anger among loyal customers of Bud Light.
“The reaction was explosive,” he writes.
“Customers call for a boycott. The celebrities entered. Kid Rock was among the first to do so, posting a video of him shooting a bundle Bud Lights with a rifle. “F *** bud light and f *** Anheuser-Busch,” he concludes eloquence.
The Fericks came to “Last Call” as the last Insider and a Budi fan long before working for them and even before he was enough to drink it.
In 1989, he looked at Superbowl between his city team, Cincinnati Bengals, and San Francisco 49ers, a game also called “The Bud Bowl” as it was the first time a company, Anheuser-Busch, and its two brands Larger, bud and bud Light, produced an ad special for Superbowl that would not appear after Superbowl.
“Although I was unable to drink legally, I knew Budweiser and Bud Light were cute,” he writes. “Recognizing the latest social advertising and phrases purchased at the lunch table.”
Since Fericks could not buy or drink beer legally, he did the other thing better.
He bought Neoni Bud Light tables, bottles and memorial steins on Ebay and searched from his local store for remaining screens.
“I decorated my room as a sports bar,” he recalled.
The obsession grew when Morris went to the University of Yale.
When graduating from Yale in 2006, the Fericks got a job in Boston, sharing an attic apartment with two other boys and their gentleman “serving exclusively bud Light”.
It seemed that the predetermined Ferricks would end up working for his favorite brand, and in 2011, after the Harvard Business School, he joined Bud Light’s parent company.
When Bud Light sales peaked in 2008, making it no. 1 Sale of beer in America, then the owners of Anheuser-Busch were subjected to hostile Belgium-based inbev, and the $ 52 billion agreement that resulted not only was the largest money deal in history but created the most factory large beer in the world, Anheuser-Busch Inbev. or “AB inbev”.
Three years later, after finishing at Harvard Business School, the Fericks joined AB Inbev.
Twelve years later, however, Bud Light would lose its title as the most popular beer in America and the company’s fall was fast and shocking. “I have seen the brand evolve from a synonym of America to one facing an identity crisis created by her,” writes Fericks.
And it was mainly due to the promotion of Dylan Mulvaney, a clip completely in violation of the values the company had spent decades building with customers. “The election of Dylan as the brand’s ambassador was unauthentic,” he writes. “Dylan was sponsoring a” March Madness “competition apparently had no knowledge of what Mars Madness really is.
“Authenticity was missing. So it was logical. ”
But the decision to use Mulvaney was not a wrong choice of the moment. It was, says Fericks, the almost inevitable result of the AB Inbev union and the way both approached the business.
Anheuser-Busch, for example, lacked financial discipline, but knew how to create loyalty to the brand. Inbev, meanwhile, was hot for efficiency, but lacked expertise to connect to consumers. “In theory, the combination would be built on everyone’s strengths,” writes Fericks.
“In reality, Inbev culture won and brands in the end lost.”
Many mistakes were made.
The relocation of the company’s center from St. Louis in New York City in 2015, for example, changed the company’s culture beyond recognition.
“In St. Louis, AB was Break Company. All in St. Louis wanted to be the man bud. Many people from all over the country moved to St. Louis be the bud too, ”writes Fericks.
“In New York, AB was just another faceless corporation in a faceless building.”
There were changes in the visual identity of the beer brand, large management turnover and billions of dollars of debt received to finance purchases.
Also in 2015, the conglomerate made a big mistake with the Bud Light’s “Up for Whatever” campaign, where they crushed 140 different slogans in their bottles.
For the most part, they were not offensive (eg, “perfect beer to destroy the two dance moves”), but one was catastrophic. “It was said that bud light was” the perfect beer to remove “no” from your dictionary for the night. ”
Bring a fire storm to social media.
The brand was accused of promoting ‘rape culture’ protecting for the removal of ‘no’, writes Fericks.
As AB Inbev drew the bottles and apologized unequivocally, he failed to learn.
In 2016, another campaign, “Bud Light Party” advertising, also left the trial and trustees.
Planned to run throughout the 2016 presidential elections, they displayed comedians Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen-renowned opponents of Donald Trump-and highlighted issues such as the quality of gender wages and the same sex marriages.
Customers were not impressed.
Bud Light sales dropped almost 5% in the first half of the year, did not improve in the second and then marked the worst performance of sales and shares in the third quarter of 2016.
“And so an ad campaign that may have appeared ‘unifying’ for New York elites, in fact felt intact and failing for customers in Red America,” says Fericks.
It is precisely why the story was repeated in 2023 when they employed Mulvaney – this time alone was worse. “They say that learning in public is painful, but lessons stand,” says Fericks.
“But for Bud Light, the lesson may not have been quite painful.”
One week before the partnership with Mulvaney, Bud Light sales had fallen by 1.6% compared to last year.
For the week ending on April 8, sales fell by 11%.
By April 15, sales fell by 21%.
As Fericks explains, bud Light was done no. 1 beer in the US, because it had always been apolitical, and were those campaigns that focused on things that united people – such as sports, music and humor – gained attraction.
Instead, the company lost millions of clients and lost billions of shareholders. It also resulted in thousands of dismissals and a damaged reputation almost beyond repair.
“Bud Light has become the poster of everything that has gone wrong with the capitalist movement of stakeholders and the big corporations that are fighting against perceived social injustices,” he writes.
Meanwhile, for Fericks, the fall of Bud Light should remind other American brands to focus their attention on their most important asset – the consumer. “This will be good for the company, and it will be good for millions of fans like me, who trust the company to offer cold beer, good times, help when needed and a” half -filled “perspective for life.
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