Anheuser-Busch Inbev said Tuesday that revenue growth in most of its global regions was offset by a drop in North American sales, in a sign of continuing fallout from a promotion with a transgender influencer that cost it sales.
The world’s largest brewer and parent company of Bud Light said adjusted earnings for the latest quarter rose 4.1% to $5.4 billion on revenues that climbed 5% to $15.6 billion.
Revenue in the United States for the July-September period, however, tumbled 13.5%. AB InBev, based in Leuven, Belgium, noted that sales to retailers were down “primarily due to the volume decline of Bud Light.”
Bud Light sales plunged amid a conservative backlash after the brand sent a commemorative can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in early April.
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I doubt it has anything to do with the taste…
They are not even trying. All their tv commercials are now for Modello. Same company.
Modelo is AB InBev outside the US. Inside the US, it’s Constellation Brands, which is totally different company. So it’s not the same company in the US.
InBev’s net income rose 4% to $5.4 billion, or 86 cents per share. That was ahead of the 84 cents Wall Street expected, according to FactSet.
Oh no, somehow revenue dropping 13.5% revenue is bad.
Americans realising it came out the tap the whole time
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Note that they still gained revenue. The idiots not buying Bud Light just bought another of the bajillion beers AB Inbev owns.
And not just gained revenue, but 5.4 god damn billion dollars. “Hurting” my ass. They can give me some of that so they can keep milking this bs
Hey, if they wanna give me some of that billions, I’ll let myself get dehydrated and give them my piss.
I mean, it tastes the same, probably.
Nah, you’d have to be pretty well hydrated to recreate Bud Light.
A bunch of idiots switch to Modelo… also owned by AB
Revenue in the US was down 13%, as mentioned in the article.
Reminds me of when the US was in some soccer related match against Belgium, and AB In-Bev decked their Budweiser cans out in American flags.
Idiots everywhere. ‘yeah gimme an America beer to support team USA!!’
…Those sales went to a Belgian owned conglomerate.
Nothing is more American than global trade and purchasing shit from our allies, nothing wrong with that
Only now did 'Muricans realise the product itself sucks due to that promo?
That’s a very loose definition of the word “struggles”
5.4 billion in revenue last quarter. Oh they’re struggling so hard.
Or “beer”.
Careful your transphobia is showing.
More like my hydrophobia.
The only reason I’ve ever bought bud light is because of the trans support.
like sex in a canoe, fucking close to water.
This is quite offensive to water.
I’m only familiar with the “controversy” from the headlines, but I don’t quite understand what pissed off the conservatives so much. Budweiser just sent this person a custom-branded 6-pack or something, right?
Every company sells their product to people from all walks of life, it’s just not always publicized. The fact that they choose to rage against Budweiser of all brands is just ridiculous to me. Now if they were complaining about the quality of the beer, that I might understand.
Rightwing influencers need content just like every other influencer. They found out about the promotion and then went to work making the videos that would drive their audiences absolutely insane over this nonsense.
To them, simply recognizing a trans person as their name or gender they present as is enough to mean that you want to groom children. So because Busch didn’t call Dylan a “he” or whatever her dead name was, suddenly Busch is supporting the indefinite rape of children. Their minds only go to the absolute extremes, and the only way to make them back down from their ingrained views is to be a family member or friend who knows them personally.
If the only choice is Bud Light, I will just have water. Bud Light and Coors Light are just the worst beers I can imagine. Not even worth considering. I’d just as soon be 100% sober then drink one.
You must not have had a lot of beers if those are the worst beers you can imagine. It’s a low abv light lager, there’s a time and place. Like floating or tailgating. It certainly doesn’t taste foul, just doesn’t taste like much.
Del’s black cherry shandy. I bought them because I love the lemon, but they were out of lemon. The black cherry tastes like cough syrup.
I still drank them, no point in wasting them. But I’m never buying them again.
The worst beer is called Name Tag from Trader Joe’s. I couldn’t even finish one as a joke. I thought it might have gone bad so I opened another and it was the same. I ended up tossing the whole 6 pack. Some beer is crap and I’m just not that desperate.
Good point. I’m not a fan of BL, but I will choose it over almost any craft beer I’ve had.
That shit is just bonkers. No wonder it doesn’t sell volume.
Both of those are still better than Miller Lite.
Miller Lite is fine. It’s not great its just fine. Even says so on the label!
The beer I hate the most is Michelob Ultra. It’s not even that it’s gross, it’s not that notable, I’ve had beers that made me want to vomit. MU is just so boring, it’s so bland it’s not even refreshing. If it was disgusting I could dismiss it at just “not my thing” but there was just nothing notable. If beer was body language, MU would be a shrug.
The most disgusting beer I’ve had was St Arnolds 5 O’clock Pills.
Not by an amount that is meaningful. You can toss them all into the trash where they belong.
Miller Lite is so disgusting, I used it as a drinking cessation aid, the first time I quit cold turkey and had terrible night terrors, the 2nd and hopefully final time I quit, i slowly stepped down with decreasing sized tall boys of Miller Lite till I switched over to delicious Non Alcoholic IPA’s. Was still hard, but easier with how disgusting Miller Lite is, the only beer that is more disgusting is Rolling Rock, but unfortunately it doesnt come in 6 different sizes of tall boys.
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Accessable and low carbs.
No…
Rightwingers started making a bunch of noise. And AB immediately caved to them. Making the vast majority of everyone else not want to buy their products either.
If they stayed on course the drop probably wouldn’t happen. Instead they managed to piss of the majority of Americans on both sides.
Worst part was they hung Dylan out to dry. She didn’t ask for the partnership, they wanted to use her for her demo. Then, when bigots started losing their minds, they threw her under the bus. They offered zero guidance or support of any kind. After unleashing the hate and vitriol of assholes across the country, silence. Fuck everyone involved at InBev.
Piss is the key word here.
This is gonna be in PR textbooks one day, if it isn’t already. It’s a shining example of what not to do in the face of a moral panic.
Manipulator&Sons PR Advice for major corporations:
Step 1) (mostly applies to Americans) Hire a propaganda specialist to monitor current news propaganda cycles that will inform marketing on current minefields.
Step 2) Don’t step in political minefields created by said propagandists.
Step 3) Profit.
it’s a picture perfect case of how not to market towards your target audience. not anything to do with “moral panics”
I’m almost certain the best move in the face of moral panic is to stay the course.
Acquiesce to the bigots and you piss off your supporters too.
I wonder what percentage of people who would be put off by Budweiser caving to bigots so quickly would actually regularly drink Budweiser in the first place?
Have you seen the way those hipsters guzzle PBR? Do you really think it tastes any better than Budweiser? Image is EVERYTHING when you’re selling cheap beer. Budweiser could have cemented its place as a progressive all-inclusive all-american beer. Instead they gave in to the bullies, an act that no bully can respect.
PBR has a very distinct flavor. Its not great but its fine.
The best thing about a PBR is, if you don’t finish it… oh well
It goes really well with tortoise shell glasses and a beard. 🙄
Selling hipsters on a basically dead beer like PBR would be easier than getting them to drink the most mainstream of beers.
Budweiser could have cemented its place as a progressive all-inclusive all-american beer.
Why would they do that when it’s already firmly-cemented amongst a demographic of the complete opposite, and they have 392846 other beer brands to experiment with?
I don’t think hipsters have been into pbr for like ten years, but it’s possible I’ve just aged out of hipster circles.
We’re all about Pliny out here. I don’t know if I can afford to be a hipster anymore tho
Hipsters aren’t really A Thing any more. Sure there are people who still act like that about stuff, but I don’t really see anyone making it their whole personality any more. It’s gone back to individual niches.
It’s more of “if you want a dirt cheap beer and theoretically could be a hipster”. Like I drink it when I’m looking for something cheaper than a local ale/lager and not liquor. It’s ok. Light beer is rarely worth it to me though. It’s too flavorless, if I want something with that few calories I just get whiskey
A vanishingly small percentage. The kind of people that care about inclusivity and LGBTQ+ rights aren’t the kind of people that drink Budweiser. Their core demographic skews very heavily to the dude bro side of things. They pissed off a significant chunk of their existing customers, and then by immediately backtracking lost any potential new customers they might have picked up. They basically made the worst possible set of decisions they could have.
The kind of people that care about inclusivity and LGBTQ+ rights aren’t the kind of people that drink Budweiser
It’s so weird that people actually think this is true.
I can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of people I know who drink Bud or Bud Light, and every last one of them is deeply conservative.
I live in LA and go out to bars in West Hollywood occasionally. Most people at gay bars order cocktails, since they are dancing and don’t want heavy stomachs; but the beer choices are typically Bud brands, and people order them. The liquor stores in West Hollywood sell Budweiser, as do the grocery stores. The restaurants there have Bud brands on tap or in bottles.
Gay people do drink Bud Light. Maybe not the same percentages or amounts as MAGA Bros, but they do drink it.
Oh well if you’ve got such hard-hitting science behind you I guess I just look silly.
I mean I’ve provided just as much data as you have. Your stance is “it’s weird people think this”, and my response is that’s because that’s what people experience. Obviously if everyone you know who drinks Bud is conservative, you’re going to associate those two. I’ve never seen anything to suggest that isn’t the case, and you’ve provided no evidence to counter that either.
Budweiser products have a level of market share (still, even today, after a fairly big hit) that defies political leanings. Their market share was hurt by both political reactions to this complete non-issue of a marketing idea.
The politicization of beer is dumb, as a general rule.
Gays and straights, rich and poor, people just drink beer they like (and, often, can afford to drink in bulk)
So?
How many college aged kids do you know?
Why do you think there’s no gay people out there that just want to chug cheap beer? Like, you’re low key being really bigoted and just stomping your feet when people are trying to explain why you’re wrong…
People’s sexuality has zero to do with what kind of alcohol they prefer… that shouldn’t need to be explained in 2023, but here we are.
How am I being bigoted?
As for the other question, at this point I think I know 2 people in college. It’s been a while since I’ve been out of college myself so I’m mostly having to go by my memory from back then. The two people I know in college don’t drink beer, and back when I was in college nobody I knew drank beer either, we all pretty much exclusively drank rum or vodka, or occasionally like a hard cider or something. My understanding is that beer consumption among millennials and younger generations is down pretty much across the board as is alcohol consumption in general (although less so than beer specifically).
This is less a question of alcohol in general though than it is one of brand perception. Bud has always sold itself as the 'murica beer, just like Fosters always sold itself as what people that have never been to Australia think is an Australian beer. Marketing and brand perception is really the only thing that differentiates most of these beers, as really they’re all pretty much the same stuff in the can.
How am I being bigoted?
Because for some reason you think people who support LGBT rights can’t enjoy cheap shitty beer…
I’m not sure what you’re not getting here. It’s the same as saying they don’t watch sports, like fast cars, shooting guns, or any other stereotypically “straight thing”.
Does that make sense?
My anecdata is similar. The only people I know who drink budd/miller/any other cheap crap beers also happen to be trump voters
Yeah that’s the question. Like I’d’ve stopped buying their beer over them caving if I hadn’t stopped buying their beer over it tasting eerily similar to some nonalcoholic beers.
If you cave to conservative backlash and stop supporting me then I stop supporting you.
Bud Light sells at gay bars the same as any other beer lol
Gay people are just normal people.
Yeah I think a lot of people think of us as more urbane and refined, and yes, I do definitely feel that our community and culture encourages that. But also I’ve met plenty of dudebro gay guys that would reach for a bud same as their friends. Hell I’ve met nonbinary folks who are as hick as it gets.
I generally won’t drink Bud, but I used to tolerate it at shows just to get something alcoholic that wouldn’t break the bank. As is, I’d rather spend more than have two shitty tastes in my mouth…
The people who drink Budweiser and Bud Light are the people who buy cheap beer. Whether it’s at a bar or stocking up for a party, it’s like buying chips or pizza, you aren’t thinking too hard about it. Miller or Busch or PBR or Coors or Old Style or Michelob or any other roughly equivalent beer (half of which are also owned by AB) works just as well. Budweiser gave people a reason to think about their beer, and didn’t give anyone a reason to think positively about their beer. If you are looking at the available options, and one of them is associated with bigotry, you’re going to pick anything else.
I didn’t understand that campaign… Bud Light has always been the wilfully shitty and boring beer that appeals to (and I’m trying to be diplomatic here… ) blue collar types or those that don’t really have a discerning palate.
Millennials and Zoomers by and large don’t drink that much beer. Gender neutral/accepting club kids don’t drink beer. If they’re drinking anything, it’s likely cocktails or white claw. In the odd event they went for beer it would be something quirky or higher quality than Bud fucking Light. Presumably Bud was trying to appeal to that crowd since their chief demographic is stagnant, but Bud Light was silly to not go after a group adjacent to their core audience but instead court a fickle segment of the population who doesn’t give half a fuck about what they’re selling and moreover is full on HATED by who already consumed their beer. Bud has decades of cultural weight about being a conservative, blue collar beer… that matters for better or worse
For the record: I’m glad a brand like Bud (who I have zero love for) made overtures to the trans community… even if it was crass commercialization. From a purely capitalist perspective, it made zero sense for a brand like Bud. What’s worse, due to Bud’s misstep, bigots now feel emboldened and other brands might make the decision to not be inclusive after watching this play out
Trans allies (and open minded folks in general) by and large moved on from tasteless American adjunct lagers a decade ago and drink completely different beer. Bud is a relic. Trying to give it a hurried makeover won’t suddenly make it cool. Jumping into the culture war fray and folding the instant bigots complained just fucked things up Bud’s appeal for anyone whose attention they had
Beer is the preferred alcoholic beverage of 69% of men aged 18 to 29, 65% of men aged 30 to 49, 52% of men aged 50 to 64, and 39% of men aged 65 and older
Millennials and Gen Z drink beer at higher rates than other generations
Trans allies (and open minded folks in general) by and large moved on from tasteless American adjunct lagers a decade ago and drink completely different beer. Bud is a relic.
This does not hold up, mathematically.
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I will say that the trans community where I am definitely are beer drinkers but overwhelmingly the vibe is locally produced stuff. I know at least two trans folk who run breweries. Maybe folk who conquer the lows of discontentment with one’s body and place in society to finally live as their most authentic self despite the cultural blowback are gunna be a little more aspirational in their self care than Bud Lite?
Just sayin…
