Image Credit: SOPA Images via Getty Images 
A rare case of the much clichéd “get woke, go broke” phenomenon actually proving true appears to be unfolding after it was revealed that Anheuser-Busch distributors are “spooked” by the backlash to Bud Light’s endorsement of transgender celebrity Dylan Mulvaney.
Last week, Mulvaney, a gay man who now claims to be a woman, announced he had partnered with Bud Light, with the company even producing a special label with his face on it to celebrate the endorsement.
“This month I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever — a can with my face on it,” Mulvaney says in the Bud Light ad he posted to Instagram.
Mulvaney has become famous for prancing around and performing an exaggerated caricature of a woman as part of his “transition,” with Bud Light being just one of several companies to pay him handsomely for pretending to be female for clout.
However, while many similar high profile boycotts seem to go nowhere, the backlash against Bud Light actually appears to have some legs.
Numerous Anheuser-Busch product distributors are now dropping Bud Light and other brands owned by the company, including Budweiser, Stella Artois, Shock Top, Kona Brewing Co., Michelob Ultra, and Busch Beer.
According to an industry insider from Beer Business Daily, distributors are panicked at the backlash that is taking place in conservative areas across America.
“We reached out to a handful of A-B [Anheuser-Busch] distributors who were spooked, most particularly in the Heartland and the South, and even then in their more rural areas,” said the insider.
Instead of backing off, Anheuser-Busch doubled down on the Dylan Mulvaney deal, asserting that their “commemorative can” for the transgender activist was intended to “celebrate a personal milestone,” a reference to Mulvaney’s 365th day of pretending to be a woman.
The backlash accelerated after a video emerged showing Bud Light Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid denigrating the brand’s usual target market.
“We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach,” Heinerscheid said, adding, “Representation is sort of at the heart of evolution, you have got to see people who reflect you in the work.”
How’s that working out for you?
Stock for Anheuser-Busch InBev was lower by 3 per cent on Monday, although it remains to be seen whether the controversy will actually cause long term brand damage.
Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”.
How’s that working out for you, lady? @budlight pic.twitter.com/zNYKbMnZnu
— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) April 9, 2023
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