The saying “Get woke, go broke” was for a long time just a conservative cliche, but it does not seem to be that way any longer.
Bud Light is learning that the hard way after it partnered with transgender influencer and activist Dylan Mulvaney last month for an advertising campaign that featured Mulvaney’s face on a beer can.
The backlash to the marketing decision was immediate and intense, with Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch seeing a massive drop in revenue due to anger over the advertisement.
At the time, one might have been tempted to think that this would be flash in the pan boycott that would quickly fizzle out after a few days, but it has been over a month since the controversy began, and things are only getting worse for Anheuser-Busch.
According to NBC, sales of Bud Light have continued to plummet as the backlash against the Mulvaney campaign continues. Data shows that for the week ending May 13, sales of Bud Light fell by 28.4 percent, a downward trend from 27.7 percent the previous week.
Now, an industry expert is saying that this is absolutely unprecedented in the packaged consumer goods industry.
“Nobody imagined it would go on this long,” said Harry Schuhmacher, editor of Beer Business Daily. He continued: “It seems random — it struck a nerve. I’ve never seen anything to compare it to, in all of the [consumer packaged goods] industry. It’s a real shock.”
This latest news should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the Bud Light fiasco over the past month, as it is being reported that Bud Light is basically giving away its beer for free at this point.
The company is even being forced to buy back cases of beer as they sit on store shelves and pass their expiration date.
Do you think more woke companies are going to suffer?
Yes: 100% (9 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
What is surprising, however, as Schumacher said, is the fact that this boycott has lasted for so long.
Conservatives are used to corporations going woke at this point, and oftentimes the response is a flimsy limped-wristed boycott that goes away after about a week or so.
In this case, however, it has been over a month since the initial controversy, and far from losing momentum, the boycott against Anheuser-Busch has only gained momentum.
This is due in part to the fact that there are several options for light beers out there that conservatives can choose from, and they have even gone so far as to create their own alternatives.
But more fundamentally, in the days following the initial controversy, it came to light that Bud Light executives had used the ad to spit in the face of its existing customer base, and now that base has abandoned the company.
Bud Light flew too close to the sun when it came to woke advertising, and now it is paying the price.
Conservatives should take heart from this news, as it proves that we do in fact have the numbers and the influence to strike back at massive corporations like Bud Light when it adopts leftist advertising.
Bud Light may just be the first example of ordinary Americans taking an effective swipe at woke corporations.
