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.
…So… it’s making billions instead of billions? My God…
InBev is anus and their generic beers are mostly horrible. People should have already been boycotting them long ago for being a soulless international conglomerate.
Chances are there is a local or regional brew that corresponds to whatever mass market swill they produce, and people should drink those small local brewery offerings instead.
No no, tasting like piss is not the issue here. They never once complained about drinking the worst made beer ever.
Clearly the issue was someone once gave 6 beers to someone they don’t like.
I mean, once that person posted on social media… well bigotry requires that they must shout about people “shoving this issues down my throat” and act like an asshole.
I mean that person who got 6 free beers posted a fucking picture about in the internet… can you believe that? From now on you gotta buy piss from someone else. I bet they’re not “woke” in South Africa…
/s
for being a soulless international conglomerate.
I think this rhetoric would hit harder if the alternatives were willing to sacrifice profit to give us a better deal.
I want bud light to die because it’s shitty beer. I don’t want bud light to die like this because homophobes will think they won something.
It shines bad light on Budweis (České Budějovice), home of the best beer in the world (second only to another Czech town Plzeň/Pilsen)
Til it becomes popular enough for these leeches to buy it out…
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Do you want a discussion or to hear your own beliefs repeated back to you as is usual fare in this subreddit
in this subreddit
“subreddit” 😂 go back there if you miss it so much
When you have browsed reddit for 12 years in nearly identical apps, it takes some time for habits to die off. That said, fuck reddit.
Go ahead, I can’t wait to listen to you regurgitate FOX talking points.
I despise fox news. I suppose the answer to my question was as I feared. Single minded American Polarity with no interest in discussion. How beneficial to the human race.
Downvote with no reply = I’m right and you don’t like it
A discussion about what? You could explain to everyone why you’d do something so stupid but does it really matter? It wouldn’t make it less stupid.
That’s the republicans bread and butter
“Stupid and Hateful.” I agree.
They aren’t. They are actually mad about how shitty their lives are, but rather than seek a way to improve their lives, they would rather drag everyone else down. The problem is that they hate themselves, and they are convinced that they must deserve whatever hell they have built for themselves because if they didn’t deserve it, something or someone, would come along and drag them out of their shithole. For all their talk about bootstraps, they don’t really believe it. Your station in life is where you deserve to be. That’s why they worship people like Trump and Elon. How could someone that rich ever be wrong?
this comment reads like projection. some of the most unhappy and bitter people I know are leftists. republicans can be retarded but most conservatives I know are in happy families with good jobs. Whereas the lefties I know are all “struggling artists” or similar, have no money, no children, no family, and hate everyone around them who disagrees with them.
What if I told you there’s a huge swathe of totally normal people who aren’t the psychopaths boycotting beer over a single advertisement or full on commie pinkos?
people are avoiding a product that doesn’t line up with their values. isn’t that a good thing? or only when you disagree with those values?
isn’t that a good thing?
It’s a bad parody.
Values? What values? Human beings not identical to you are alive, thats a value to you?
Man, the “different values” thing is about work ethic, and sex before marriage, not other people being allowed to breathe.
The definition of values is “a person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life.”
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Just because you don’t personally agree with it doesn’t mean its not a value some might hold. Don’t be stupid.
You could even say, they cancelled Bud Light.
Oh wait no, they don’t do that! /s
“Muh team no matter wut.”
I doubt it has anything to do with the taste…
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Why all the bud light peeps just swapped to other subsidiaries of the patent company, it’s not like they are actually losing money it’s just the bud light idiots never went back and this shows that effect.
Is that the reason, or is it because it’s flavourless pisswater?
Only now did 'Muricans realise the product itself sucks due to that promo?
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‘Drinking a shit beer to own the betas’
You do you, but you really should just drink a better beer.
Why punish yourself like that? Might as well drink iced tea, at least that has more flavor.
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Yeah, this is one of those cases of not knowing your own market. While what they did was laudable in a general sense, they should have also realized their core demographic is heavily conservative and that such a move was highly likely to hurt them far more than it would benefit them.
Bud in general and Bud Light in particular is just the worst kind of swill. It’s only redeeming quality is being cheap.
The cheap Bud Light analogue is Natural Light.
How was it laudable? They caved to the bigots nearly immediately and fired the folks responsible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/business/bud-light-dylan-mulvaney.html
I meant the original move, not the immediate backtracking. They started from a laudable position by at least attempting to be somewhat inclusive, then of course immediately fucked it up once their quarterly profits looked like they might take a hit.
Fair enough - it’s a personal pet peeve of mine that the backtracking rarely gets mentioned (as backtracking) in coverage of the event.
Target didn’t do much better, IMO.
If you look there’s plenty of cheap beers that taste at least a little better. When I was in college in the 00s I’d drink Lion’s Head for like $10 a case.
Plus they had little puzzles under the caps so it’s got more value.
Hmm fair enough. Its only redeeming quality then is being cheap and well known. Really there’s no good reason to drink Bud, even before they pulled this stunt they were crap.
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That’s really overselling what it was. They made ONE can with the special print, the also made a number of other special cans for other influencers that weren’t “woke”. This was supposed to be a quiet nod to the LGBTQ+ community, which also drinks a reasonable amount of bud light, just like the rainbow tap handle my local gay bar has for it on tap.
How or why the right-wing outrage machine landed on this as the outrage du jour, who knows? But they and most major brands do stuff like this all the time, they just got really unlucky.
Also worth noting, beer sales in general, and especially big brand light lagers have been declining. Attributing all of Bud Lights decline to this one instance ignores a lot of other trends.
Yeah I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this was calculated to coincide with the decline. It’s a nice easy win to call for a boycott of something of declining popularity.
I think they just didn’t appreciate our current media environment well enough. They thought they could try to expand sales to new customers with a TikTok ad campaign that their core consumers would never see. What they didn’t plan for was the fact that right-wing “news” has become pure Christian nationalist grievance propaganda that scours social media for anything they can use to outrage their audience; they didn’t expect that their little TikTok ad campaign would become the biggest story in the right-wing outrage ecosystem for weeks.
What they didn’t plan for was the fact that right-wing “news” has become pure Christian nationalist grievance propaganda
If they didn’t expect that their head has been in the same for eons. I think this is the leadership of the company making decisions based on their environment and what investors wanted. They knew it would piss off the right. They assumed the right was irrelevant.
Which might be true in like 40 years, but for now the kids they’re appealing to aren’t drinking beer. Hell. The way trends are going they never will. Alcohol to my knowledge isn’t nearly as popular as it was, and people see it for what it is among the younger generations.
No amount of rainbows and trans influencers will convince people to start drinking poison. But your average idiot with no sense of the consequences of their actions?
Guess who they tend to vote for.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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…
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.
Selling hipsters on a basically dead beer like PBR would be easier than getting them to drink the most mainstream of beers.
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.
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
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.
We’re all about Pliny out here. I don’t know if I can afford to be a hipster anymore tho
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. 🙄
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?
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.
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
like sex in a canoe, fucking close to water.
This is quite offensive to water.
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I mean they pissed off the only people willing to drink their dog shit excuse for alcohol.
Yep, the other comments trying to explain away the drop are just sour grapes.
Terrible business decision.
Amazingly, they ended up pissing off both sides.
First, they pissed off the transphobes.
Then, they pissed off everyone else by acquiescing to the bigots and pulling the ad campaign.
An absolutely moronic series of business decisions.
That’s what I like to see.
Right wingers hated the decision a lot. Bud Light did not want to lose customers so they caved.
And in trying to save the transphobe dollar, they pissed off everyone else. Maybe this will teach companies to just support them and ignore what the right wing/transphobes (I know, I repeat myself) complain about, because you know you can’t count on them once you capitulate.
they pissed off everyone else.
Who exactly is everyone else?
Seems like bud light is the meathead beer for jocks at college parties or cookouts.
And in trying to save the transphobe dollar, they pissed off everyone else.
How does no article seem to get this? I was geared up to buy cases of bud light for my 4th of July bash, explicitly because of the conservative reaction to that event. I don’t even like Bud Light generally, though I’ll admit a cold Bud Light Lime in the summertime can be refreshing. Then Anheuser-Busch fired the people responsible and backtracked.
Nope.
Now you have lost the business of the bigots and the allies, Anheuser-Busch, well fucking played. You deserve this “hardship” (which we all know is a blip at most) for having no fucking spine and caving to bigots.
Companies should just stay out of politics. No matter the position they take, they will be alienating customers.
That’s a position only the privileged can take.
I remember when the left was railing against corporations and working to limit their reach in politics. Not begging them for validation and pushing them to be more involved in politics.
There’s a difference between taking a stance on social issues and bribing a government official.
Smart business move.
