Anheuser-Busch Heir Has Advice for Management at Bud Light Following 'Huge Mistake' with Dylan Mulvaney
It would be safe to say that beer is in Billy Busch’s blood.
The great-grandson of Adolphus Busch, co-founder of the Anheuser-Busch brewing giant, is the product of a fortune built on the brew, and he’s in the business himself.
So the current management of the company his family built — a company with a major brand that’s been torpedoed by its own progressive executives — might want to listen to what he has to say in order to stop foundering in a public relations nightmare.
It’s shockingly sensible.
“If I had a chance to talk to them, I’d say ‘Really, understand who your beer drinker is and who your audience is with your brand. Because, trying to push a political agenda in such a way obviously is not the way to go because … it’s hurt sales so much,” Busch said during an interview Monday night on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
“Learn what sells in America.
“Understand what the beer business is like, and sell to those people in that way.”
Check out the interview here:
That’s about as obvious a piece of business advice as “buy low, sell high,” but it was clearly forgotten by the ad execs at Bud Light, who imploded the country’s best-selling beer in April by partnering with a transgender influencer and publicly insulting the company’s own customers.
“So I have this super clear mandate,” Alissa Heinerscheid, the now-former vice president of marketing for Bud Light, said in a now-infamous interview, explaining how she wanted to “evolve and elevate” the brand.
Turns out, in a development that would surprise pretty much no one who had beer drinkers for actual friends instead of focus groups, Bud Light drinkers weren’t exactly interested in being “evolved and elevated.” And they certainly weren’t interested in it if it meant publicly affiliating with Dylan Mulvaney, the previously unknown man whose two biggest claims to fame are pretending he’s a woman and destroying Bud Light.
“The company greatly miscalculated what they thought was being inclusive, but it really was divisive,” Busch told Hannity. “I think my family — they lived by the motto ‘making friends is our business’ — They believed that bringing people together, making it a sociable, fun, beer-drinking experience was the way to go.
“People that drink Bud Light, that drink beer, really don’t relate to that kind of advertising. So it was a huge mistake.”
“Huge mistake” might be only two words, but they carry a world of meaning.
It’s a mistake that’s having its worst impact on Bud Light’s employees and other businesses that depend on the brand.
But it was a result that would have been pretty much predictable to any man or woman who actually bought a Bud Light lately.
Sure, Bud Light and other beers have been marketing to gay and lesbian consumers for years. Sexual minorities spend money, too, but making Mulvaney the face of the company, however briefly, is not a way to get any product into the mainstream of the American market — much less a product like beer.
Anheuser-Busch has been owned since 2008 by the Belgium-based international conglomerate InBev. Of course, Bud Light isn’t the beer giant’s only brand, but it was the United States top-selling beer for decades, as The Associated Press reported in June. And while the beer that replaced it at No. 1, Modelo Especiale, is also an InBev brand, there’s no denying that losing market share to competitors like Coors Light and Yeungling has hurt the overall bottom line.
At this point, Bud Light’s future depends on the forgiveness of American beer drinkers. The company’s tried to recover on its own steam — issuing a statement, putting out ads — but the efforts haven’t taken hold.
(That’s probably because the statement was ludicrous and the ads were condescending to the point of being insulting all over again, but they’re trying.)
The best it can do is maybe try to get back to the roots Busch described at the top of his interview with Hannity. After all, the man isn’t just the scion of a fortune built on beer; he’s opening a new brewery in St. Louis, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
He might put the family’s historic lore to better use than Anheuser-Busch’s current owners.
The company’s founders and their heirs, he said, “wouldn’t ever have gotten as political as this. And let’s face it, the transgender topic today has become very, very political.”
“It’s not wise for a beer company to get into that game.
“I think that it’s difficult enough to be advertising beer — and to try to do it and be political about it. I think it’s just, not the way to go.”
Bud Light executives are finding that out the hard way — and it’s a rock-solid bet that the executives of other beer companies and other businesses are taking the lesson to heart.
Going woke might look good on paper and sound good at cocktail parties in the Hamptons, but it’s a really good way to go broke if you’re selling to real people.
Take it from a guy with beer in his blood.
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