Video: Bud Light So Unpopular at One Bar It's Been Permanently Physically Removed Following Mulvaney Fiasco
The Dylan Mulvaney fiasco and Bud Light boycott must be reaching the point where it peters out, right? Well, despite what one assumes are the perfervid wishes of Anheuser-Busch InBev, only the opposite seems to be the case.
In the latest sign of the beer-blacklist times, a Buffalo, New York, bar has officially banished the potent potable from its lineup of on-tap brews — and footage of the event has gone viral on social media.
It’s the latest augury, after another terrible month, that Bud Light won’t just bounce back.
According to the New York Post, the video of the event was initially uploaded on Thursday by social media personality Daniel M. Keem.
In the video, Keem narrates as his local pub removes the handle for Bud Light and replaces it with Miller Lite, instead.
“So, Bud Light is so boycotted that it’s being removed,” Keem said in the video.
“For Miller!” a person offscreen screams.
“It’s being removed from my local bar. Holy s***. That’s crazy,” Keem said. He then asked whether anybody was still buying the beer.
“No. No,” the bartender said.
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
My local bar finally gave up & is removing Bud Light completely from the bar permanently. pic.twitter.com/8LjJK8M6Lu
— KEEM 🍿 (@KEEMSTAR) July 27, 2023
One bar isn’t necessarily going to make all the difference, even if it is dumping what used to be America’s favorite beer. However, the fact that it did — and that the video went viral, with almost 9 million views on Twitter as of Monday morning EDT — shows how serious the challenge Anheuser-Busch InBev faces is.
Just a day after Keem uploaded the video of the Bud Light handle being removed from his local pub, Bud Light’s parent company announced it was laying off 2 percent of its workforce.
“While we never take these decisions lightly, we want to ensure that our organization continues to be set for future long-term success,” Anheuser-Busch Chief Executive Brendan Whitworth said in a statement, according to CBS News.
“These corporate structure changes will enable our teams to focus on what we do best — brewing great beer for everyone.”
Well, not necessarily everyone, as July’s numbers showed.
In the month ending on July 15, the beer’s sales were down 26.5 percent over a year ago. Rival Modelo was up by 13.5 percent year-over-year and was again more popular than Bud Light, with an 8.7 percent share of the market vs. 6.8 for Bud Light.
And, for some time now, preserving jobs has been part of AB InBev’s pitch to conservatives to end the boycott. As Fortune reported, Whitworth gave an interview to CBS in June. The outlet reported that, when “(a)sked what troubled him the most, he said it was his 18,000 workers and the additional 47,000 people employed by its distributors. That number doesn’t count the farmers he said were also affected by the boycott.”
“It’s the impact honestly on the employees that weighs the most on me,” Whitworth said.
However, Bud Light has done everything but explicitly apologize for the Mulvaney stunt since it occurred on April 1. It’s now been almost four months since that fateful Instagram advert involving a beer can featuring the transgender “influencer” was highlighted in a short for Mulvaney’s “365 Days of Girlhood” campaign.
No apology. No “we’re sorry.” No mea culpa. And, at plenty of domiciles, restaurants and bars around America — including one in Buffalo, New York, that went viral — no Bud Light.
The solution to this mess isn’t hard for Whitworth and other executives at AB InBev. They should be the first ones on the chopping blocks — and, indeed, they’d be following the people who masterminded this horrible campaign.
If those two little words — “I’m sorry” — are so difficult, here are two more they should hear: “You’re fired.”
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