The agency behind the Bud Light trans debacle that starred activist Dylan Mulvaney is again in the news for all the wrong reasons after boasting about a lavish trip to advertising knees-up Cannes in mid-June and then promptly sacking 13 staffers.
Californian-based Captiv8 became the most talked about agency on the planet after its ill-thought out stunt with Mulvaney saw Bud Light sales slump 25 per cent, which cost parent Anheuser-Busch a cool $US400 million in lost sales and saw the brand lose its title as the number one selling beer in the US.
Captiv8’s current client roster includes McDonald’s, Disney, Toyota, Nordstrom, Macy’s and OceanSpray. Anheuser-Busch has never publicly named Captiv8 as the agency behind the ill-advised stunt.
Now, The New York Post has revealed Captiv8 management flew senior staffers to Cannes in mid-June all aboard a private luxury jet.
A Captiv8 staffer’s Insta post of luxury gift bags aboard the private jet
The agency’s Instagram post shows the staffers whooping it up aboard the luxury plane, as well as the yachts, pool parties and villas they visited in the south of France.
The Captiv8 team’s Cannes villa & party
According to The Post, agency CEO Krishna Subramanian boasted to staff in a Zoom meeting about the trip upon their return. Two days later the “tone-deaf” Subramanian sacked 13 workers or about five per cent of the agency’s 200 staff.
Tech entrepreneur and Captiv8 CEO Krishna Subramanian
Subramanian later explained the redundancies, saying he was “examining budgets” and “evaluating finances”.
One staffer who managed to dodge the bullet told The Post: “The timing was terrible. You wouldn’t expect to be laid off after such an extravagant trip. If you get more business in Cannes then you don’t downsize and cut your manpower.”
Another Captiv8 staffer said that the Cannes junket was “paid for in tandem with our brand partners and clients, having no impact on the company’s overall bottom line”.
The spokesperson said the trip was a “meaningful business development lever for Captiv8″.
