Bud Light looks wedded to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for the foreseeable future following its multibillion-dollar advertising fiasco in the spring.
Though Anheuser-Busch is mum on the subject, Mulvaney envisions a day when he will be promoting beer on the biggest stage.
“Maybe it’d be epic … if in like 10 years I got to do a beer commercial for a Super Bowl,” he said in an interview with The Cut.
Anheuser-Busch can’t seem to break away from its mistake.
In March, according to The Cut, Bud Light approached Mulvaney about promoting its product.
It put Mulvaney’s face on a beer can to celebrate the influencer’s 365th day of “girlhood,” which he proudly displayed in an April 1 Instagram video.
A Bud Light boycott swiftly followed.
Perhaps the most memorable reaction was Kid Rock shooting up cases of the beer with a semi-automatic rifle and then pronouncing, “F*** Bud Light and f*** Anheuser-Busch.”
Will Bud Light’s reputation ever recover?
Yes: 10% (1 Votes)
No: 90% (9 Votes)
The singer has since been seen drinking Bud Light and still sells it at his Nashville bar.
Nonetheless, Anheuser-Busch InBev has taken a huge hit from the multi-month boycott, losing nearly $37 billion in market value.
The company’s stock sold for just over $66 per share in April and dropped to $53.40 by June. It had slightly recovered to $56.29 as of Wednesday.
Bud Light also lost its coveted spot as America’s most popular beer to Mexican lager Modelo, which is also owned by the Belgium-based AB InBev.
Mulvaney blames the controversy on “transphobia.”
“I think hopefully years from now we’ll look back on this time period and be like, What the f*** was that?” he told The Cut.
“I don’t think I’ve actually f***ed up majorly. I think that the world is f***ed up.”
In June, Mulvaney criticized Anheuser-Busch for not standing by him during the boycott.
”I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did,” he said then. “For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all.”
Mulvaney probably has a point: Anheuser-Busch was like a deer in headlights.
The company’s latest ad push features Americans enjoying Bud Light as they watch NFL football — straight down the middle, right to its customer base.
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
Is a Super Bowl beer commercial featuring Mulvaney possible 10 years down the road?
Anything is possible, but something tells me the lesson Anheuser-Busch and its competitors learned this time around will stick in their memory for a long time.
