Marketing: Bud Light's ill-fated campaign

Sales have dropped as conservatives boycott the beer company

Bud Light beer cans.
(Image credit: Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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Bud Light put itself in the middle of the culture wars with "a single commemorative can of beer," said Danielle Wiener-Bronner at CNN — which "wasn't even for sale." The controversy started with a beer can sent to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender TikTok star, to "mark a milestone in her transition." A conservative backlash ensued, and sales plummeted, off 26 percent for the week ending April 26 compared with a year earlier. By this week, Bud Light's maker, Anheuser-Busch, was in full damage-control mode. Between the initial promotion and Anheuser-Busch's defensive reaction, the beer maker managed to anger both sides. A "milquetoast statement" from Anheuser-Busch's CEO and putting two marketing executives on leave failed to placate conservatives. Meanwhile, the vitriolic response and Budweiser's failure to defend Mulvaney confirmed liberals' worst suspicions. "What I'm struggling to understand is the need to dehumanize and to be cruel," Mulvaney said this week.

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