- Bud Light is offering $20 off its beer cans after sales fell for the fifth week in a row
- Major American beer has been under control since partnering with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney in April
- The recent promotion of Bud Lite has been criticized on social media with right-wing commentator Ashley St Clair leading the criticism
Bud Light seems to offer beer for free After her disastrous partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The brewer is being mocked online for offering a $20 discount on unsold cases of just $19.98.
The leading American beer brand and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, have been under damage control since Mulvaney shared a series of shared posts with her 11 million social media followers on April 1.
The beer company’s latest attempt to win back consumers comes as sales fell for the fifth consecutive week, falling nearly 24 percent in the week ending May 6.
An image of the discount offer being taped on unsold cases of Bud Light beer has now gone viral, and customers are claiming it’s a desperate attempt by the company to win back sales.
Commentator Ashley St. Clair posted a photo of the promo on Twitter and mocked it.
“The Bud Light marketing team should be all women if they think a coupon will catch a guy’s eye,” she wrote.
Her post has been viewed nearly three million times and has received tens of thousands of likes and comments.
Users quickly dismissed the offer, claiming that it was a desperate attempt by the company to recoup sales.
Tim Paul said: $20 for a can of beer gets you $20?
“Bud Light is turning away from their beer perhaps in a desperate attempt to make sales look like they’re coming back.”
While another wrote: Why do they think it’s about the price? The level of tone deafness…can’t be explained very well.
St. Clair was accused of sexism over her post, with one user asking if it was now “feminine to be frugal?”
But she responded, “I’ve never seen a man use a coupon,” and added, “They would literally make their own brewery before using a beer coupon.”
The terms and conditions of the discount are not clear or if you need to spend a certain amount on groceries to qualify for the $20 off. Dailymail.com has contacted Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch for comment.
Mulvaney sparked widespread outrage in April by posting herself sitting in the bathtub while she sauntered out of custom Bud Lite boxes while smacking her face.
She posted under the hashtag #budlightpartner to coincide with the NCAA March Madness tournament, before joking that she didn’t know what sport she was promoting.
A show of disastrous marketing has seen sales of America’s flagship beer drop as much as 20 percent on a weekly basis.
In the week ending May 6, Bud Light sales in stores across the United States were down 23.6 percent compared to a year earlier. And in the week before that, ending April 29, sales fell 23.3%.
This follows lower sales for the week ending April 22, which were 21.4 percent. And seven days ago, the drop was 17 percent, according to NielsenIQ data provided to Dailymail.com by Bump Williams Consultancy.
“I don’t think the downturn in sales/volume is going to get worse, but I do think the negative volume trends will continue,” Bump Williams of Bump Williams Consultancy told DailyMail.com.
He said a 20 percent drop in sales appears to be the new “norm” for Bud Light.
But he added that experts are waiting to see what happens to sales during Memorial Day and the summer sales season to assess whether the damage will last.
“This appears to be where the brand’s weekly declines are starting to level off, dropping in the -20% range over the past few weeks,” Williams, the alcohol industry specialist, told the St. Louis Business Journal.
“I wonder if this will be the expected ‘floor’ for Bud Light decline moving forward unless something drastic changes.
Bud Light appears to be facing ire and potential boycotts from all sides of the political spectrum, though it is largely centered around conservatives.
The partnership with Mulvaney drew intense reactions from some quarters, with musician Kid Rock posting a video of himself shooting cases of Bud Light, and country singers John Rich and Travis Tritt canceling ties with the brand.
But media figures like Joe Rogan and Howard Stern have defended Bud Light’s decision.
Anheuser-Busch reported first-quarter profit of $1.65 billion, which beat Wall Street expectations.
The brewery generated $14.21 billion in revenue in the period, also beating expectations, with shares up 6 percent year-to-date and 12 percent in the 12 months.
It’s not clear if the boycott has any impact on these numbers, and whether a greater impact on the company’s finances will be visible in the fiscal second quarter if the controversy and boycott continue.
The brewing giants are now claiming that the beer can and social media post weren’t “meant to be produced or sold to the general public.”
CEO Michelle Docris disavowed the ad on Thursday’s earnings call, insisting the ad was “not a campaign,” and that an outside agency approved it without Bud Light’s approval.
Todd Allen, recently Global Vice President of Budweiser, has been announced as the new Vice President of Marketing for Bud Light – after Vice President of Marketing Alyssa Heinsreid and Blake took a leave of absence.
#Bud #Light #beer #mocked #offering #discount