Bud Light Pain Continues

Attention spans are rather short, so it becomes a real question regarding Bud Light whether it can actually ever fix the problem it created when it teamed up with transgender Dylan Mulvaney and return itself to the #1 spot in its category.

I think the beer can recover. But I am not sure if it will ever do so fully.

Part of the problem has been the lack of any real apology nor acknowledgement that they "screwed up," and that has been weighing heavily on boycotters when they decide whether or not forgiving and forgetting is an option.

Of course, only time will tell. Surely 10 years from now will anyone even really remember who Dylan Mulvaney even was, let alone the controversy? Older generations will. But newer generations won't, and that's going to be who Anheuser-Busch, the parent company who owns the Bud Light brand of beer, is going to target through its marketing campaigns.

That being said, the controversy and the boycott live on, with AB still down more than 30% since the boycott started, and it has been holding steady. Sales have not otherwise picked up despite multiple marketing efforts to pull the brand away from the image of Dylan Mulvaney and instead focus on the workers—and now they've brought in Manning and other prominent athletes to try to bring the beer back around to more popularity.

Which, by the way, could be a good thing or a bad thing. For Manning, that is. It wasn't that long ago that veteran star Garth Brooks came under fire for supporting Bud Light quite vocally. I don't have stats on record sales or streams, but I do recall reading somewhere that he's been abandoned by at least a portion of his audience.

The thing for Bud Light was that its campaign (which they denied was even a campaign) simply came at the wrong time. Too many companies had tried to go woke and quite simply put, people simply had enough.

"You're shoving this identity thing down our throats, and we're sick of it. Just sell beer," they so much as said to AB. And it was a message to other companies as well that we're tired of being marketed feelings and ideology, and we're tired of being forced to make-believe that these ideas resonate with more people than they actually do.

It does seem to me that AB has pretty much gotten the message. The odd thing is that they are rather quietly acknowledging it. Rather than just come out and say it, they are simply looking for distance to right the situation for them. 

But again, only time will tell if Bud Light ever sees itself back in the #1 spot ever again. In the grander scheme of things, even if Bud Light can ever get to #2, sometimes that's not a terrible spot to be in either.

Like the way I write or the things I write about? Follow me on my Facebook page to keep up with the latest writings wherever I may write them. Looking for something different? Give my single, Where Do I Go a spin on Spotify.