It's been over a year since Bud Light made the disastrous decision to partner with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. If you asked me then whether a boycott of Bud Light would work, even if for a little while, I would have said, "Absolutely not." But something strange happened. Bud Light, which Anheuser-Busch owns, is, to this day, still struggling to make up for that horrible mistake. Bud Light sales are still falling.
"Revenue for Anheuser-Busch jumped 2.6% to $14.55 billion from higher prices, but volume sold dropped 0.6%, though it was less than Wall Street anticipated. The largest decline came from North America, where volume dropped 9.9%, largely due to sales of Bud Light," reports Yahoo Finance. "Sales to retailers and wholesalers were down 13.7% and 10.7%, respectively, in the U.S."
According to Bump Williams of Bump Williams Consulting, it will take years for Anheuser-Busch InBev to recover.
"We've lost a whole generation of hardcore Bud Light shoppers," he told Yahoo Finance. "It's going to take us at least 10 years to try and recapture what we lost in one year."
Williams believes that Anheuser-Busch will have to appeal to Gen Zers when they turn 21 to build sales back up again.
"They're not going to remember any of that stuff [regarding the boycott]. When they come into the marketplace, they're going to say, 'Oh, boy ... I know that I liked their advertising ... I'm going to go grab one,'" Williams suggested.
Since the plunge in Bud Light's sales first hit in Q2 2023, its next quarterly results will be the true test of the company.
"We think a lot of consumers are never going back ... but some are coming back," CFRA analyst Garrett Nelson told Yahoo Finance.
"The longer-term impact, I think [we won't know] until we see their second quarter results," Nelson said.
Over the last four-week period, Bud Light sales are down 27.1% from a year ago, whereas Miller Lite is up 7.8% and Coors Light grew 15.3%, according to data from Bump Williams Consulting.
Other brands faced a similar backlash after Bud Light's misstep in pandering to the transgender cult. Mere months after the Dylan Mulvaney debacle began, retail giant Target encountered consumer outrage for selling merchandise and clothing promoting radical leftist gender ideology to children and placing these displays front and center in their stores. A boycott ensued, and the company lost billions in market value. Meanwhile, Disney has been losing money for creating woke content.
The lesson in all of this is that while liberals have long been the gatekeepers of popular culture, conservatives still have the power to cause a cultural transformation. We don't have to tolerate woke content that leftists push on our kids, and we don't have to stand by quietly when their radical agenda gets shoved down our throats.
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