Bud Light Hits Resistance After Launching Huge Effort to Win Back NFL Fans: 'Nice Try'
Bud Light has launched a new marketing campaign to try to win over NFL fans ahead of the upcoming season, and to say it hasn’t been warmly received would be an understatement.
The Anheuser-Busch InBev beer brand has tried pandering to its former customer base through a number of ad campaigns since April, when it paid a man who claims to be a woman money for reasons that remain unclear.
As a result of Bud Light’s social media partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, the brand has been toppled as the country’s best-selling beer and has become a punchline that has lost its parent company hundreds of millions of dollars.
But football season is upon us — the Kansas City Chiefs host the Detroit Lions in the opener on Sept. 7 — and Bud Light has seen this as an opportunity to try to get beer drinkers back onboard.
Naturally, a reputation is a lot easier to destroy than it is to build, and so the campaign is not going well.
In a Monday social media post, the brand shared a clip of a perfectly diverse crowd of people enjoying Bud Light and used it to promote free NFL Sunday Ticket packages:
Sundays are getting even easier to enjoy. This season, we’re giving away $1 million in NFL Sunday Ticket packages from YouTube and YouTubeTV
Click the link to enter: https://t.co/ZbNG1d4f51 pic.twitter.com/gXsxpyvPau
— Bud Light (@budlight) August 28, 2023
By Tuesday morning, the video had racked up just 12 reposts, 160 likes and 275 comments — many of which expressed their disinterest in the beer:
nope still not buying it
— Maggie Melo🇨🇦🇵🇹🇺🇸 (@MaggieMelo93292) August 28, 2023
No thank you. Not again.
— Stable Genius (@nolongerhere94) August 28, 2023
Sunday beer? Made mine an all-American Yeungling Black & Tan! #GoWokeGoBroke 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/nZAzysxtNg
— Rich Muny 🇺🇸 (@RichMuny) August 28, 2023
Bud Light and AB hate real (biological) women. They’ll hire a confused man to pretend to be a woman, but they won’t abide an actual woman speaking out.
— Maggie Melo🇨🇦🇵🇹🇺🇸 (@MaggieMelo93292) August 29, 2023
YOUR SICK TRANS PUSH COST YOU 37 BILLION DOLLARS!!!!
NEGATIVE $37 BILLION 😂🤣😂
— Patriot Mom 🙏🇺🇸 (@hcroys) August 29, 2023
Charles Goldman with A to Z Sports also tried to push limited edition Chiefs cans of Bud Light onto football fans:
Bud Light, the official beer sponsor of the NFL, has launched 2023 limited edition team cans. #Chiefs cans have a Super Bowl LVII champions logo. You can scan the QR codes on the can for a chance to win a free sub to YouTubeTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket and e-gift cards to Fanatics. pic.twitter.com/fDW5h4nBQu
— Charles Goldman (@goldmctNFL) August 24, 2023
Even fans of the defending Super Bowl champions were not interested:
Nice try but No
— AK23-9 (@AK_CHI_KC) August 25, 2023
Hard pass
— AC / KC (@K1knight) August 25, 2023
I wish it would have been Miller.
— MO Country (@PracticalPolit2) August 25, 2023
Too bad Bud Light is trash.
— America LFG 🫡 (@Merica1776yeahp) August 25, 2023
I love the Chiefs, but not that beer.
— Ron Duncan (@RonDuncan7) August 25, 2023
This time one year ago, Bud Light was sitting on its throne as the country’s best-selling brew and enjoying four decades of esteem from beer drinkers.
After a disastrous five months, it doesn’t appear a gimmicky NFL campaign is going to mend any fences.
Bud Light hired woke advertising executives who spiked the brand and forever tarnished it in the eyes of countless Americans who wanted a beer and not to fund the delusional lifestyle of a man playing dress-up.
The company hasn’t apologized for entering the culture war on the side of the left and apparently expects normal, everyday people to simply forget everything and move on.
AB InBev executives should probably at this point accept that one of the company’s premiere brands is now an afterthought for many, many people.
Meanwhile, other companies should continue to take notice.
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