Bud Light has seen a sharp drop in US sales following the beer’s collaboration with a transgender social media influencer, the company's owner has revealed.
Parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev said that US revenues had dropped by 10.5 per cent in the second quarter of the year.
It added that an increase in global revenues of 7.2 per cent to $14.8bn (£11.7bn) had been “partially offset by the revenue decline of Bud Light in the US”.
Trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney promoted Bud Light beer in April and later modelled Nike products including a sports bra.
Bud Light has seen a sharp drop in US sales following the beer’s collaboration with a transgender social media influencer
@dylanmulvaneyHer partnerships angered a number of women's rights activists who actively boycotted the products she teams up with in protest.
The decision to launch the partnership was labelled "tone deaf" by prominent figures such as Tucker Carlson and Kid Rock.
As part of the campaign, the 26-year-old influencer posted images of the customised Bud Light cans with her face on to mark “365 Days of Girlhood”.
Just days before Mulvaney’s partnership was unveiled, Alissa Heinerscheid, vice-president of marketing at Bud Light, said she wanted to modernise Bud Light from a “brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humour”.
In response, the musician Kid Rock filmed himself taking a machine gun to several cases of the beer and shouting: “F**k Bud Light. And f**k Anheuser-Busch.”
Tucker Carlson, one of America’s conservative TV anchors, said: “Bud Light fails over this. I don’t want to root for bankruptcy, but in this case, I think we have to hope for that.”
The drop in US revenues masked what appeared to be relatively good results for AB InBev, which included an 18.4 per cent rise in combined revenues of global brands Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona, outside of their respective home markets in the second quarter.
Chief executive Michel Doukeris said: “Our business delivered another quarter of profitable growth.
The musician Kid Rock filmed himself taking a machine gun to several cases of the beer and shouting: 'F**k Bud Light. And f**k Anheuser-Busch.'
Reuters“Revenue increased by 7.2 per cent with an ebitda increase of 5 per cent. We continue to invest in our strategic priorities for the long-term.”
AB InBev said that since April, when Mulvaney’s TikTok videos were first shown, the company had used a third party research firm to survey 170,000 customers about Bud Light.
It found 80 per cent were favourable or neutral about the brand.
