Bud Light rolled out a new summer-themed ad in hopes of getting back into the good graces of beer drinkers, but the effort fell short for many Twitter users still smarting over the branding partnership with controversial transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The ad, which is musically set to the 1979 hit “Good Times” by Chic, shows a group of people using ice cold cans of Bud Light to cool off from the intense summer heat in an outdoor setting.
Revelers who appear to be attending a barbecue are seen carrying kegs of Bud Light while using bottles of the beer to wide sweat off their brows.
Anheuser-Busch InBev has lost nearly $20 billion in value since Mulvaney posted images and video touting Bud Light on April 1.
The Mulvaney posts sparked anger from many who vowed to boycott Bud Light and its sister brands.
Bud Light’s new commercial is part of its “Easy to drink, easy to enjoy” series of ads.
“Crack a cold one: we’ve got an epic summer ahead. Sock tans included,” the company wrote on its Twitter post touting the new commercial.
But Twitter users weren’t convinced.
“We haven’t forgotten,” one Twitter user.
Another Twitter user commented: “Have you apologized yet for slamming your loyal customers?”
“All I see is Dylan Mulvaney,” another Twitter user wrote in response to the ad.
Another Twitter commenter wrote in response to the ad: “Lol! Not a chance.”
“Still ain’t buying your product,” another Twitter user declared.
“This should have been the ad instead of Mulvaney,” another Twitter user wrote. “It wasn’t. Too late.”
The ad was released just days after Bud Light suffered its worst weekly sales drop since the Mulvaney partnership was rolled out.
For the week ending June 10, Bud Light sales dropped by a whopping 26.8%, according to the latest data from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ.
That’s wider than the 24.4% drop seen during the prior week — and topped the all-time previous worst plunge of 25.7% during the week ended May 20 — since the beer giant got into bed with Mulvaney on April 1.
Anheuser-Busch’s other brands also saw their sales lag for the week ended June 10, according to the data.
Sales of Budweiser were down 10% compared to a 7.8% decline the previous week, while Natural Light was down 2.3% vs. a 1% decline. Michelob Ultra – the nation’s No. 3 beer — was down 2.4%.
Bud Light was supplanted by Modelo Especial, the Mexican lager whose international distribution is controlled by AB InBev but whose US operations are owned by Constellation Brands.
Earlier this week, Anheuser-Busch’s top marketing officer, Marcel Marcondes, accepted the award for “creative marketer of the year” at Cannes Lions, which is dubbed the “Oscars for the advertising industry.”
Marcondes stopped short of offering an apology for the Mulvaney partnership — which the company has blamed on an unnamed third-party marketer.
“In times like this, when things get divisive and controversial so easily, I think it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers, for us to be very humble,” Marcondes said.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
