Bud Light To Pause Marketing And Adjust Influencer Partnerships After Dylan Mulvaney Fallout
Bud Light must be feeling the heat from its disastrous partnership with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney.
The company has been under fire since an embarrassing decision to create a special commemorative beer can for Mulvaney. Naturally, Mulvaney then shared the can on social media.
The decision has been associated with a $5 billion drop in market cap for Bud Light in just a few weeks.
The Daily Wire reported Thursday on further details from what happened inside the company and the fallout from the bizarre decision making.
According to "sources close to the situation," no one at a senior executive level at Bud Light knew that the partnership existed.
And as a result of the overwhelmingly negative feedback, the company is "allegedly pausing its marketing efforts and scrambling to implement a more 'robust' process for evaluating future influencer partnerships," according to the report.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 05: Dylan Mulvaney attends the 65th GRAMMY Awards on February 05, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
Bud Light Paying the Price for Woke Managers
Despite the apparent internal strife, the company initially defended its partnership with Mulvaney. It described it as an effort “to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics and passion points.”
The Daily Wire again quoted a source who believed that a "low-level marketing staffer" made the decision.
“No one at a senior level was aware this was happening,” said the source. “Some low-level marketing staffer who helps manage the hundreds of influencer engagements they do must have thought it was no big deal. Obviously it was, and it’s a shame because they have a well-earned reputation for just being America’s beer — not a political company. It was a mistake.”
That mistake will seemingly lead it to reconfigure its influencer partnership efforts to avoid controversial figures like Mulvaney.
Publicly, however, its vice president of marketing has explained that her mandate was to change the company's "frat guy" image.
This Bud Light incident is a perfect example of the dangers of allowing woke politics to infest corporate initiatives.
Companies believe that in order to attract younger customers, they must appeal to progressive ideologies. Ignoring that even among the youth, woke politics represent a minuscule percentage of the population.
But they hire marketing and partnership staff who come from that minuscule percentage. That staff then do exactly what they should be expected to do: appeal to liberals.
For certain companies that may make sense, but for companies like Bud Light, it shows a disastrous lack of awareness.
Hopefully these reports of reevaluating their partnership efforts are accurate. Maybe next time corporations and the woke managers they employ will think before they act.