‘Consumers are lost forever’: Bud Light sales remain 30% down since Dylan Mulvaney marketing debacle six months ago – as industry expert warns decline could be ‘quasi-permanent’

Bud Light’s damage is so severe that there are concerns about whether the brand can ever fully recover after the prolonged decline in sales and loss of consumer confidence since Dylan Mulvaney’s marketing debacle six months ago.

The damage to the brand is now described as “quasi-permanent,” according to Beer Business Daily publisher Harry Schuhmacher. “The situation at Bud Light has actually gotten worse,” he told Fox News Digital.

Despite initial hopes for a recovery, the brand’s volume remains down about 30 percent compared to last year and has continued since May or June, and consumers could be lost “forever.”

Schuhmacher, a seasoned industry expert who has been monitoring the brand’s decline since the controversial promo with the trans influencer last spring, said Bud Light’s problems persist and pose serious challenges to its future prospects.

“You see that Bud Light is still stubbornly down about 30 percent in volume compared to last year, where it has been since May or June,” Schuhmacher said. Fox News digital. “That tells me this is quasi-permanent, which means those consumers are just lost forever.”

Conservatives and liberals alike are boycotting America’s once best-selling beer. While conservatives are criticizing Bud Light for promoting it with a trans influencer, Mulvaney fans are condemning the brand for not doing enough to support her.

Mulvaney claimed to have faced bullying and transphobia after the ad, which became so bad that she had to escape to Machu Picchu on holiday.

Recent statistics show that Bud Light’s latest week trends mirror the trends of the past four weeks, with declines of approximately 30 percent in dollars and 30 percent in volume, as reported by Bump Williams Consulting.

Schuhmacher predicts that these year-over-year declines will continue for the foreseeable future, at least until April and May 2024, when the controversy will be a thing of the past.

“I think the industry thought it would have recovered by now, but that’s not the case,” he added. “It’s actually worse than just losing sales, because now it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming systemic within the industry, and they’re losing the trust of the retailers, and that’s when it starts to get bad.”

The situation has escalated to such an extent that not only sales are being affected, but also retailers’ confidence in the brand.

Loss of confidence by retailers can result in a reduction in shelf and display space, hampering inventory placement and visibility in stores.

Summer 2024 is seen as a pivotal time for Bud Light’s long-term success, and the brand must work to regain retailer trust, he said.

CEO Brendan Whitworth visited the Anheuser-Busch Houston Brewery in late August to announce a $22.5 million investment.

Schuhmacher acknowledged the challenges facing wholesalers across North America, who have been hit hard by Bud Light’s troubles.

“See those end caps at the end of the aisles in the grocery store? “If you start losing that, that’s bad because not only are you losing the visibility of the store, but you’re also losing the ability to load a lot of inventory into the store,” he said.

“Displays are an important tool for the beer industry to move beer, and that could be a concern for AB (Anheuser-Busch).”

Schuhmacher said the struggle for the brand continues as they are somewhat “powerless” to recoup their losses.

“They are somewhat powerless to solve the problem other than staying really active in their local community, which they have done and always have done. And actually that is the only saving grace for that brand: the local connections that the wholesalers have. But it’s been a tough summer for those guys, you know, shout out to them, and it’s probably going to be a tough winter,” he told Fox News Digital.

“We’ve never seen anything like this in the beer industry.”

Their local connections to communities could be the brand’s saving grace, but it has undeniably been a difficult time for them, he said.

Bud Light’s historic decline came after it teamed up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a marketing campaign.

The first controversy arose when influencer Dylan Mulvaney presented Bud Light cans with her image on them, celebrating a year of “girlhood.”

In the controversial promotion, Mulvaney, 26, posted a video of herself opening a Bud Light on her Instagram page on April 1.

The hangover from the catastrophic advertising push has been going on since the collaboration was released in early April.

Since the approval, the brand’s fortunes have taken a significant hit and the road to recovery remains uncertain.

In August, the beer giant lost its place as America’s number one beer brand to Modelo Especial, a position it held for more than 22 years, due to the controversy.

Bud Light sales at off-site locations such as grocery stores and gas stations were down 15.9 percent on a dollar basis and 20.1 percent on a volume basis last year.

Millions of customers ditched the US brand within days of Mulvaney’s social media posts, with scores filming themselves pouring beer down the drain and tossing the cans into bins.

And as the polarization spread to bars across America, where customers traded insults and recriminations about each other’s beer choices, some bar owners said they would stop selling Bud Light simply to avoid fights.

In August, Mulvaney finally broke her silence on the controversy, telling Them magazine that she prefers not to name her critics “because it gives them the satisfaction of believing that I am thinking of them.”

“It shows my followers that I’m standing up for myself, but also reinforces that their story is loud enough to matter,” she added.

Mulvaney said openly about the backlash for the first time: “Regardless of your gender, people will project things onto you about who you should be. And I think we should just as well tell people our real purpose.