Whether you read it on B&T or elsewhere, there’s been no escaping the Bud Light marketing fiasco in the US over the past week or so.
As a quick recap, America’s biggest beer brand enlisted trans activist and comic, 28-year-old Dylan Mulvaney (below), to promote the brew in a campaign Bud’s vice president, Alissa Heinerscheid, said was designed to attract more female and younger drinkers because otherwise “there will be no future for Bud Light”.
Seemingly offended by a trans person fronting their favourite brew, Bud’s loyal drinking base soon began to boycott the beer, leading to a 70 per cent fall in sales while Bud’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, saw its market cap plummet $A6 billion. Read B&T’s reporting HERE.
Continuing the backlash (namely from right-wing, white, men’s groups) comes a new beer for aggrieved Bud Light drinkers called Ultra Right Beer.
The beverage is the work of a conservative, pro-Trump politician from Georgia called Seth Weathers and is aimed at outraged right-wingers who want to drink a “100 percent woke-free beer”.
The beer even features Weathers front his own advert for the brew that many can’t believe isn’t an actual parody.
In the spot, Weathers declared: “America’s been drinking beer from a company that doesn’t even know which restroom to use. That’s why I created Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right 100% Woke Free beer. […] Stop giving money to woke corporations that hate our values.”
Watch it below:
America’s been buying beer from a company that doesn’t even know which restroom to use.
There’s a new beer in town! pic.twitter.com/JHm4BspZwB
— SETH WEATHERS (@sethweathers) April 12, 2023
A sick-pack of Ultra Right Beer costs $US19.99 ($A29.80) and Weathers has said he’s been inundated with orders.
Weathers telling Newsweek: “I’d never seen anything like this, and I’ve been in e-commerce for years. We got restaurants, bars, military bases, everything you can imagine, all over America—and even internationally, we got requests from Europe, Canada, and somewhere else, I can’t remember.”
Following on from the furore (and share price plunge), last Friday AB InBev CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a statement over the marketing fiasco without once mentioning Dylan Mulvaney.
The statement read: “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
Whitworth said he “cared deeply” about the country and planned to “spend much of my time traveling across America, listening to and learning from our customers, distributors and others.”
However, the insincerity of it all was soon called out.
Many saw the statement as a thinly-veiled apology in an attempt to appease right-wing beer drinkers, with one critic calling his words “an epic leadership fail”.
“Pathetic statement from @AnheuserBusch CEO,” wrote @KaivanShroff on Twitter.
“To be clear they sent a trans influencer personalised cans of Bud Light. That’s not ‘dividing’ people. Caving to these hateful bigots is what divides our country. Shame on you, Brendan Whitworth.”
Advertising expert Ben Schott wrote in his Bloomberg Opinion column that, “Bud Light actively sought out a controversial influencer in a dangerously polarised space, with neither the wisdom to plan for a backlash nor the bravery to stand by its partner.”
Read Whitworth’s statement in full below:
Since the post went live, right-wing Americans have been filmed smashing and shooting cans of Bud Light in protest at the company’s support of transgender rights. Among those were US musician Kid Rock, who filmed himself shooting a stash of beer cans with a sub-machine gun, and country star Travis Tritt, who announced that he would no longer include Bud Light in his tour rider.
Senator Marsha Blackburn and Caitlyn Jenner have also spoken out against the Mulvaney partnership, and guitarist Ted Nugent condemned the hook-up as “a middle finger to Bud Light’s core consumer demographic.”
