When will brands learn? For seasoned marketers this thought has undoubtedly been front and centre as Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light debacle led to serious ramifications that will be felt long after the drama subsides — not only for the brand but for the company itself.
This is yet another brand among a growing list of well-known examples to have experienced significant consumer pushback. In the past year, Burger King (“women belong in the kitchen” social media comment on International Women’s day), Tampax (tweet “sexualizing women”), Duolingo (wading into the Depp vs Heard trial in poor taste) and Balenciaga (a print ad featuring a child pornography Supreme Court ruling printout), to name a few, have suffered one or other setback from campaigns gone wrong. For Anheuser-Busch, not only has the Mulvaney debacle eroded positive brand sentiment for Bud Light, the brewing company’s profits have taken a knock.
The company had sent Mulvaney, a US-based transgender influencer who had celebrated “365 days of being a girl”, a commemorative Bud Light can featuring Mulvaney’s face
There is a glaring lesson here which marketer after marketer apparently fails to learn: if you do not really, really know and understand your customer, and if you do not speak their language in all of your brand representations, it is at your peril.
In today’s complex and multilayered social milieu, marketers are provided with numerous opportunities to engage with their consumers. Consumers for their part are able to respond directly to branding and brand messages by tagging, sharing, reacting and commenting on social media channels. Influence is the powerful new currency and social media influencers are the disciples who help spread it far and wide.
Their influencer strategy was Anheuser-Busch’s undoing. The company says sending out commemorative cans to fans and brand influencers is part of their influencer strategy and not unique to Mulvaney. But when Mulvaney took to Instagram to drink his can in a bubble bath and also promote a Bud Light competition, all hell broke loose. Widespread negative reaction to the transgender influencer resulted in product boycotts and, at the time of writing, a $5bn loss in the value of Anheuser-Busch stock. In a press statement, the company backed its decision to engage with Mulvaney by stating that it works with hundreds of influencers across its brands to “authentically connect with audiences across various demographics”.
Numbers indicated that the brand registered a 17% plunge in sales by mid-April this year compared with the same week in 2022. Leading bar and restaurant technology company the BeerBoard reported that there was a 21% reduction in Bud Light “pours” at about the same time. The BeerBoard tracks the number of pours of beers across 3,000 locations. It reported that Bud Light was being poured 6% less than its light beer rivals, which is a significant drop given that previously it had been getting poured 15% more than rival light beers.
Prior to the Mulvaney controversy, Bud Light was undergoing a brand revamp. Alissa Heinerscheid, vice-president of marketing for Bud Light, was mandated to take the brand in a new direction to halt its decline: to “evolve and elevate” it beyond what Heinerscheid termed its “fratty” image, and to ensure more female representation. Heinerscheid said in an interview that this was a strategic priority for her and a personal passion point. Since the Mulvaney controversy, Heinerscheid and her boss, Daniel Blake, were placed on a leave of absence.
Some critical questions jump out from the Anheuser-Busch statement and Heinerscheid’s comments. In the goal to thrust Bud Light in a new direction, how was the brand planning to entice a new audience without alienating its existing customer base?
The response to Mulvaney indicated that Bud Light’s current customers were not comfortable with the way their beer of choice was represented. Did Bud Light recklessly disregard its customers’ psychographic and demographic profiles, or was this a glaring lack of customer insight?
Believing Mulvaney to be a good-fit influencer for Bud Light is questionable, and perhaps gets to the nub of the entire controversy. Bud Light’s current users are predominantly male, aged in their mid- to late 20s. Previous alignments and partnering with the National Football League and well-known rappers and musicians served the brand well.
The current “fratty” image that Heinerscheid was trying to move away from is masculine, sporty and fun loving. A transgender TikTok star who recently hosted a Broadway-style musical show to celebrate “being a girl” is at odds with the Bud Light personality and its current target market.
Critics have used words like “toxic masculinity” to describe the backlash, while claiming that Bud Light should be applauded as a “forward thinking” brand. But wading into the argument about transgender politics and whether the backlash was justified are merely the smoke and mirrors that obfuscate Anheuser-Busch’s crucial error: it misread how an influencer, as an ambassador for the brand, would land with its primary target market — a target market which, regardless of future plans, is at present Bud Light’s bread and butter.
A previous executive at Anheuser-Busch, Anson Frericks, told the New York Times that the company had lost track of its consumer. When a large corporation with a historic brand identity suddenly becomes active in this type of social media campaign, said Frericks, it simply looks inauthentic. A further point is of the corporation ignoring the marketplace; in other words, the context in which the campaign was created. The US is at present polarised by culture wars especially around identity politics, as noted by beer platform Beer Marketer’s Insights editor Benj Steinman. Whether intentional or not, Anheuser-Busch stepped directly into the centre of this. Steinman says this is a place where “no company could possibly want to be”.
As the market unpacks where Anheuser-Busch went wrong, we could arguably find that a series of mistakes worked together to create the perfect storm: decision-makers caught up in articulating a new brand vision at the expense of customer insight; marketing teams selecting wide-reaching, high-impact influencers based potentially on their own preference, rather than leaning into more authentic representations; silos of messaging and channels not fully scrutinised for alignment.
Underpinning all of this is a carelessness in the customer consideration. Remember those old sayings: “The customer is king” or “The customer is always right”? If something is wrong, don’t blame the customer, as some would do in the Mulvaney case. Heads have rolled at Anheuser-Busch and the company has said it will be ensuring that senior decision-makers will from now on be closer to the coalface.
Dale Hefer is the CEO of the Nedbank Integrated Marketing Council (IMC) Conference. The IMC is an annual marketing conference that brings together marketing thought leaders from Africa and around the globe in the drive to position Marketing as Business©. It takes place on September 15 2023 and is Africa’s foremost integrated marketing conference. It is presented in association with the Marketing Association of South Africa, in collaboration with the Association for Communication & Advertising and in partnership with the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa, and is endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. This year thought leaders will coalesce around the theme “Marketing. Up close and personal”. While this can signify a variety of things, at its essence it is about marketers really, really knowing who their customers are, rather than about who they think their customers are or should be.
For more information on the IMC Conference visit www.imcconference.com. In-person tickets (conference only) are priced at R3,500 (excludingVAT) until May 31 2023. In-person tickets (conference and Effie Awards South Africa) are priced at R4,500 (excluding VAT) until May 31 2023. Limited seats are available. Virtual tickets are priced at R1,499.
There is a glaring lesson here which marketer after marketer apparently fails to learn: if you do not really, really know and understand your customers, and if you do not speak their language in all of your brand representations, it is at your peril.
— The big take-out
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