Bud Light plans to buy back unsold boxes sitting on shelves following Dylan Mulvaney controversy
Anheuser Busch continues its desperate attempt to recover from the controversial promotion with influencer Dylan Mulvaney, with the company buying back now-unsold, expired boxes as sales continue to fall.
Mulvaney, 26, posted in early April 2023 that she was drinking Bud Light with the hashtag #budlightpartner. She posted the content on the occasion of the NCAA March Madness tournament before joking that she didn’t know what sport she was promoting.
The disastrous marketing bid caused sales of the U.S. flagship beer to drop 26 percent, despite Anheuser-Busch reporting first-quarter earnings of $1.65 billion and conservatives everywhere claiming to boycott the company.
A new profile of the company’s handling of PR, social media and sales responses admits that the company and CEO Michel Doukeris are now being forced to buy back unsold and expired boxes of suds.
Bud Light is also planning a brand refresh, aligning Bud Light with the company’s sponsorship of a veterans organization.
Anheuser Busch continues its desperate attempt to recover from their controversial promotion with influencer Dylan Mulvaney that caused a drop in sales
One reported move is Bud Light buying back boxes of unsold and expired beer
They also plan to backtrack on marketing chief Alissa Heinerscheid’s plan to update what she called the “fratty” and “out of touch” branding by advertising heavily on all-American themes like football and country music, the paper said. . Wall Street Journal.
Industry analysts have warned that unless something drastic changes, negative volume trends will continue into the summer months due to the beer brand’s partnership with the transgender influencer.
For the week ending May 6, Bud Light retail sales in the US were down 23.6 percent compared to the previous year. And the week before, ending April 29, sales were down 23.3 percent.
This follows sales declines for the week ending April 22, which were 21.4 percent. And seven days earlier, the dip was 17 percent, according to NielsenIQ data provided to Dailymail.com by Bump Williams Consultancy.
The data – which shows sales in the US are falling by as much as 20 percent each week – has since been described as “poor” by industry experts.
Bump Williams of Bump Williams Consultancy told DailyMail.com, “I don’t think the sales/volume declines will get any worse, but I do think their negative volume trends will continue.”
He said a 20 percent drop in sales appears to be the new “normal” for Bud Light.
But he added that experts are waiting to see what will happen to sales during Memorial Day and the summer sales season to assess whether the damage will continue.
A new profile of the company’s handling of PR, social media and sales responses admits the company and CEO Michel Doukeris (pictured) are trying to fix their failures
Mulvany posted the content on the occasion of the NCAA March Madness tournament, sparking a backlash against Bud Light
Williams, who specializes in the alcohol industry, told the St Louis Business Journal: “This seems to be where the brand’s weekly declines are starting to settle, with a -20 percent drop in the past week.”
“I wonder if this will be the ‘bottom’ for the expected decline in Bud Light going forward, unless something drastic changes.”
Anheuser-Busch has been contacted for comment.
Meanwhile, at a CVS in West Palm Beach, Florida, attempting to move some of its Bud Light stock shelves were completely stocked with multipacks of the beers.
Onlookers joked that no one wanted to buy the alcohol after the scandal.
Another person said that after driving around various stores and gas stations in Mississippi, they saw a plethora of Bud products because “no one is buying it.”
Williams previously said Bud Light should apologize, adding, “Right now their compass is completely broken. There’s no game plan.’
Williams said that without a clear plan to navigate the setback and reverse the decline in sales, “Bud Light is in serious trouble this year.” He said the brand is still the number one selling brand in America, but risks being overtaken by Modelo Especial by the end of the year if the backlash continues.
The company has been hit by a flurry of complaints, with many customers filming themselves pouring out the liquid
His assessment comes after another PR expert told DailyMail.com that Bud Light needs to address the issue properly or “they will only hurt themselves further.”
Bud’s current responses were lame explanations of the Mulvaney partnership without a concrete apology to angry customers.
Dates from Beer business daily showed that sales of the US number one brand are down in every region of the country.
Sales in the Rocky Mountain states fell the most, falling 29 percent, with the South Atlantic, West North Central, and East South Central all falling 25 percent.
Bud Lights’ former Clydesdales horses were a staple of the ads, but the company wanted to try to reach new consumers before the backlash
The can Bud Light used to partner with transgender influencer Mulvaney and sparked the backlash that took the company two weeks to respond
The Tumbleweed, a cowboy bar in Wyoming, shut down Bud Light after the controversy — opting for Guinness instead.
Sales in the East North Central area — which includes Michigan and Illinois, both of which have seen backlash against the beer — fell 23.5 percent in the week ending April 22.
It comes as HSBC analysts have downgraded Anheuser-Busch’s shares because it is in the middle of a “crisis” over the marketing blunder.