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Although Budweiser has a long and continuous history in Marketing the Rainbow, without many protests or boycotts, this recently changed. Fairly. How one simple advertisement stirs up a country, with television and politics getting involved. Marketing dilemmas, splits and half-hearted excuses.

In recent years, the T of LGBT people has received relatively much attention, catching up after years being ignored. That inevitably leads to reactions. Show one scream queen or an ethnic minority in an advertisement and that has the effect that the narrow-minded bigots feel that THEY are being neglected, and that “it seems that everyone is <fill in the blank>”. In the Netherlands this is a bit more nuanced due to our intrinsic diversity (20 parties in parliament), but in the US they don’t hold back. Let’s take a look.

The drama

Early April, Bud Light sent a handful of cans of beer to an influencer named Dylan Mulvaney. Her image was on one of the cans. Mulvaney, in turn, posted a video of herself dressed as Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, using the beer to celebrate both March Madness and her first year as a woman. It was part of a paid sponsorship deal and promotion for a sweepstake challenge where people can win $15,000 in Bud Light by submitting videos of them carrying a lot of beer.

The reactions to the 48 seconds of Mulvaney (because there was no other promotion) were exorbitant. This one video put the best-selling beer brand in the US under fire, literally (yes!) and figuratively.

Who is that?

Mulvaney is an American transgender actress, comedian, and TikTok personality. She is best known for describing her gender transition in daily videos on TikTok since early 2022. She has over 10 million followers on TikTok and nearly 2 million on Instagram, while her Days of Girlhood video series has been viewed over a billion times. 

It’s clear that her audience is large and attentive, so it’s no wonder companies love working with her – so does Nike at the moment, with a sports bra, of all things. This was also protested from various sides, e.g. by Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, but she looks – no really – like a twin sister of the notorious professional hater Marjorie Taylor Greene, so we should take that with a grain of salt. The latter lady, a Trumpist gun advocate, barbarously described Dylan as “one of the biggest pedophiles in America today.” It just goes to show that if something isn’t really bad, you have to put a label on it that makes it bad, even if that doesn’t make any sense. Social media may take on a life of its own, but Marjorie scores points for stupidity and irrelevance.

To indicate how meaningless her statements (and actions) are: she angrily announced that she would switch to Coors beer. A brand that has been openly supporting the LGBT community since 1978. Good (re)action, Marjorie!

The reactions

It wasn’t the first time the panties of the conservative, Republican, ‘christian’, blue-collar rednecks got in a twist, but the twist was quite significant this time.

Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro denounced the collaboration on his show, saying, “Well folks, our culture has now decided that men are women and women are men and you should be forced to consume products that say so.” Turns out Shapiro isn’t much of a Bud Light fan himself, so he probably doesn’t have much to boycott. “I understand that Bud Light is piss water masquerading as beer,” he said, “so I think it’s, you know, kind of a trans beer.” By the way, why “forced”? Poor soul.

But notable figures such as Caitlyn Jenner have also spoken out against companies that work with trans women as their brand ambassadors – striking, but very ‘butter on her head’ because she herself has acted as such on several occasions.

In the “don’t say gay state” Florida, beer was taken off the menu by restaurants. On TikTok, the clip went viral of a “blue collar” person driving a pickup truck over a can of Bud Light. Trumpist rapper Kid Rock machine-gunned beer cans on Instagram (great that you can invoke both the First and Second Amendments for that!). An influencer known as Conservative Dad launched his own “Ultra Right” beer. Country star Travis Tritt tweeted a pledge to remove Anheuser-Busch products from his tour bus. In Kansas, a dumbass went wild at a grocery store by throwing packs of what he thought was Bud Light through the store. It turned out to be mainly Busch Light – the mistake is easily made, of course. This guy didn’t intend to go viral because he did not film anything himself, but he did go viral because others fearfully captured him digitally (around the corner of the shelf).

Politics got in on the act, too: Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who briefly served as one of Trump’s many press secretaries, released a series of beer koozies with female Republican governors printed on them, and tweeted the message “real women do not need to fake it”. The accompanying ‘manual’ is full of transphobic slurs and anti-trans rhetoric: “Large companies can no longer tell the difference between real and fake,” the ad read. “We will know the difference.”

Yes. A “real woman”. Charming photo too.

The current White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, condemned the fierce backlash against the brand in an official statement. So the 48 seconds also made it to the president’s desk: “If a transgender American posts a video about a brand of beer they like and it leads to bomb threats, it’s clear that the violence and vitriol against transgender Americans must end.”

The trend

This whole commotion is perhaps a trend within a trend. Since Fox News’s now-fired Tucker Carlson addressed the “evolving sexiness” of M&Ms, calling a company’s actions “woke” has become a common method for conservatives to discredit an organization’s attempts at inclusion. They probably don’t understand the meaning or origin of the word, but the message seems to have gotten through that if you name someone or something by that term (“Get Woke, Go Broke”) you are sure to provoke a reaction. Usually such boycotts fail, but the entire Republican war machine was behind this, until it turned out that Bud also provided several Republicans with election funds, so the party then tried to tone down all the commotion behind the scenes. Because then it wasn’t so offensive anymore?

There are two trends that are colliding,” said Daniel Korschun, associate professor of marketing at Drexel University. “People are much more interested than ever in the underlying values of brands”, and at the same time there is “the political polarization of the country”.

The debate is changing

Wired: “Online commentary has always been a sprawling and unruly thing” (see also my article: Haters and Trolls: The “Letters-In” of the 21st Century), “but what’s made the Bud Light controversy—and I use this term loosely—so fascinating to watch is that now, three weeks out, the conversation isn’t even about Bud Light and Mulvaney anymore. Not really. Instead, people are pointing out that the beer brands people are switching to, like Coors, also support LGBT+ people, or discussing which brewer is making Ultra Right beer. They’re talking about whether the boycott will have any long-term impact on Anheuser-Busch’s bottom line or rejuvenate the brand—and whether boycotts even work at all, given similar efforts against Nike (for its support of Colin Kaepernick) and Disney (for also supporting LGBT+ issues). It’s become about the business of debate itself.”

Boycotts

Other brands, such as H&M, Absolut, Uber and Mastercard, have been showing transgender people in their advertisements for years (see my articles Transgender persons as a target group, TRANSparency), without any repercussion or boycott – apart from the always miserably unsuccessful actions of One Million Moms. This is of course because beer, more than fashion or a taxi, is seen as a male product, even Bud Light which is probably more consumed by women. Women may be featured for such a product, but the prevailing and fierce transphobia in the US led to an immediate call for a boycott. To illustrate: there are almost 3,000 hate crimes against transgender people every year. More than 400 anti-LGBT (mostly anti-trans) laws have been introduced across states in the US this year alone.

Boycotts are a shadow area. The effect is difficult to measure or attribute, and how long does it last? Consumer anger often fades because of their ingrained habit of buying certain brands. In addition, other factors also play a role. This action originated in the conservative camp, but even there there was no unity anymore when it turned out that Bud also makes considerable contributions to the Republican coffers.

What you also see is the collateral effect: the trolls don’t think it’s enough to express their anonymous indignation (no, disgust!) under the video itself, but also look for other platforms. For example, on my YouTube channel I suddenly see comments on Bud videos that have been there for years, comments that have no relevance to those videos.

In the end, all this noise did have an effect and sales fell by 17%, rising to 21% at the end of April, accompanied by a fall in the share price of USD 4 billion*.

Mulvaney’s response

After the violent reactions, Mulvaney observed radio silence for a few weeks. She came back in the air last week, with a remarkably mild response.

“I grew up in the church and I still have my faith, which I really try to hold on to now. But I’ve always tried to love everyone, you know, even the people who make things really, really hard. I think it’s okay to be frustrated with someone or get confused, but what I have a hard time understanding is the need to dehumanize and be cruel. I just think that’s not right. Dehumanization has never solved anything in history.”

Bud’s reaction

“It was never our intention to be part of a discussion that divides people,” Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth said in a statement. “It’s our job to bring people together over a beer.”

However, the CEO’s response fell flat on both sides. Jared Watson, assistant professor of marketing at New York University: “They’ve taken this half-step backwards, which doesn’t satisfy their existing market. Meanwhile, the market they’re trying to appeal to sees this as an inauthentic move, which puts them in a position where they have not satisfied anyone.”

AB decided to shake up the marketing leadership. Alissa Heinerscheid, who oversaw Bud Light’s marketing, and AB’s Daniel Blake have taken “a leave of absence”, while Todd Allen, VP of global marketing for Budweiser, was appointed as Heinerscheid’s successor. It was a signal that senior management was not behind the campaign.

It is striking that the video has not even been posted on Bud Light’s IG channel, and even more so that the YouTube channel of the brand is currently no longer working at all.

On Bud Light’s IG you can see shining examples of tolerance and intelligence such as “Oh look, actual women” under a photo of 7 women from top football (several of whom are lesbians, but that sin is dwarfed by … TRANS). And also “Why couldn’t Budweiser hire any of these actual women as their brand ambassador instead of some biological males that dresses up as a little girl?” (yes, grammar is also a subject), “Bud Light uses mentally ill spokesman to mock womanhood” and “Only men dressed as woman are drinking this beer” – which makes no sense here, but would be appropriate for that video Ladies Night from 1993. And so, the circle is round again.

* The figure of $4 billion is fairly arbitrary. It was posted by a conservative commentator and thus became “truth”, but Newsweek downplays the drop in value to 3 billion, and does not attribute it entirely to “Dylangate”. But significant – and striking – it is.

Alfred Verhoeven is a marketer and is in the final phase of his PhD research Marketing the Rainbow. He previously wrote for ILOVEGAY about Dutch retailer HEMA loves everybody, Pronouns, About those rainbows, Alphabet soup, M&M’s and the lesbian invasion, Magnum and the lesbian wedding,  Marketing the Rainbow: the process and all that came before it, Sport and (un)sportmanship,  Why you need a supplier diversity program, BeNeLux LGBTIQ+ Business Chamber (BGLBC), From B2C and B2B to B2G and G2G (oh, and G2C), The Men from Atlantis, The other kind of cruising, Booking.com, Home Deco, Haters and trolls: the ‘letter to the editor’ of the 21st century, 5 Bizarre LGBT Videos, TRANSparency, Transgender persons as a target group, Matchmaking, 5 videos that went viral, From Representation To Respect, Cultural sensitivities and social involvement in marketing, 4 reasons to practice diversity and The Rules of Market Segmentation.