Opinion
Bud Light has lost hundreds of millions of dollars since it teamed up with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a partnership in April of last year. Though Bud Light has been frantically trying to save the brand over the past few months, a former executive with Anheuser-Busch is speaking out to say that they have not “done a good job.”
Bud Light Hasn’t ‘Done A Good Job’
Anson Frericks, a former president of operations for Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch, told Fox Business that the brand is having difficulty winning back consumers because Anheuser-Busch has not asked the customers “to come back to them.”
“They haven’t done a good job of climbing out of this ditch at all,” Frericks said. “You still have sales that are down 30% week over week, and that’s despite them last summer spending three times their planned marketing budget on Bud Light.”
Watch him talk more about this in the video below.
Mulvaney Partnership ‘Was A Mistake’
Last summer, Frericks admitted that Bud Light made a “mistake” in teaming up with Mulvaney.
“[Bud Light] was the largest brand in the U.S. because it was remarkably apolitical,” he stated. “It was always about sports, it was always about music, it was about bringing people together. That’s why it was a mistake that they did this campaign in the first place because they were unable to come out.”
“This campaign was a mistake,” Frericks continued. “Anheuser-Busch will not be doing campaigns like this moving forward. We’ll get back to the things that bring everybody together. Hopefully that can protect the jobs at Anheuser-Busch, jobs at wholesalers and get this company back growing in the right direction.”
Frericks concluded by calling on Anheuser-Busch executives to “harken back to what Bud Light always was, which is a great beer that was great to drink at football games and didn’t necessarily become part of the debate.”
Related: Ex-Anheuser-Busch Exec Finally Admits Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney Partnership ‘Was A Mistake’
Trump And Kid Rock Forgive Bud Light
Bud Light has managed to win some people back, however. Earlier this month, the former President Donald Trump called on his supporters to give Bud Light another chance.
“The Bud Light ad was a mistake of epic proportions, and for that a very big price was paid, but Anheuser-Busch is not a Woke company,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance?” he continued. “What do you think? Perhaps, instead, we should be going after those companies that are looking to DESTROY AMERICA!”
Related: Trump Joins Kid Rock, Says Conservatives Should Give Bud Light ‘A Second Chance’
The singer Kid Rock, who famously shot up cases of Bud Light in reaction to the Mulvaney partnership, also wants the brand to be forgiven.
“Do I wanna hold their head underwater and drown them because they made a mistake?” he said in December, according to The Tennessean. “No, I think they got the message.”
Kid Rock went on to say that it is primarily the working class, the “people who don’t have a dog in the fight” who are ultimately harmed by things like the Bud Light boycott.
“They screwed up, they made a mistake,” he said. I’m over it.”
Do you agree with Frericks that Bud Light hasn’t done enough to win back consumers, or do you think it’s time to forgive and forget? Let us know in the comments section.
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