Sales of Bud Light are now down another 28% coming up to the July 4 holiday, typically their busiest sales time of the year, following the Dylan Mulvaney advertising debacle.
According to data from NielsenIQ and Bump Williams Consulting, sales of Bud Light slumped down by 27.9% in the week ending June 24, a very slight recovery from their previous week’s sales drop of 28.5%, which was a record for the company.
“The Fourth of July is the biggest beer holiday in terms of retail sales and an opportunity to move a lot of volume,” said Dave Williams, vice president of Bump Williams Consulting. “And there has been no notable signs where the course has changed for Bud Light.”
The backlash against Bud Light started in April, when they recruited transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to star in an advertising campaign for the company, with many conservative beer drinkers becoming seriously disillusioned with the marketing decision.
Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, has seen its other beers drop down in sales too just before July 4, but to a lesser extent. Michelob Ultra was down by 4.4%, while Budweiser sales were down 12.1%, with no major differences between the previous weeks.
“Unless something dynamic happens to bring the lapsed Bud Light customers back into the fold, I don’t think we can expect anything to reverse the course” of Bud Light’s sinking sales, Williams told the New York Post.
He added that retailers and other beer distributors are paying close attention to the weekly sales reports of Bud Light in order to calculate the optimal shelf space for their beer selection, adding that they could be pushed out in favour of other drinks.
Bud Light attempted to bring conservatives back into the fold last month by releasing a new advert primarily featuring middle class men and women who happen to be primarily white and older, but consumers seemed unimpressed, remaining hostile to the brand.
Crack a cold one: we've got an epic summer ahead. Sock tans included. pic.twitter.com/CGRCvkHC60
— Bud Light (@budlight) June 22, 2023
Mulvaney themselves eventually responded to the backlash last week in a video posted to Instagram, saying that Bud Light never reached out to them.
“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all because it gives customers permission to be as hateful and transphobic as they want,” they said. “We’re customers too, I know a lot of trans and queer people who love beer.”
