Bud Light’s CEO is shrugging off the massive consumer boycott that has slashed beer sales by one quarter since the company’s marketing managers embraced transgender advocate Dylan Mulvaney.
“We believe we have the experience, the resources, and the partners to manage this,” Anheuser-Busch CEO Michel Doukeris said in a routine call with stock market analysts on Thursday.
“Our four-year [economic] growth outlook is unchanged,” said Doukeris, a Brazilian businessman who runs AB InBev, the multinational company that owns Bud Light and many other beer brands.
But Doukeris is also working hard to extract his brand from the debate without alienating drinkers or political activists.
He told the analysts:
Let’s talk about our consumers. We continue to be committed to the programs and partnerships that we have forged over decades for consumers and for organizations that represent a wide range of communities where we operate. We work every day to delight our consumers and brings people together. When we do this well, our brands perform ….
While beer will always be at the table when important topics are debated, the beer itself should not be the focus of the debate.
But Light is about to being easy to drink and being easy to enjoy. That’s what consumers want and that’s what we are focused on delivering.
The company has already taken some practical steps to stop the bleeding. It has sidelined the managers who hired the pro-transgender advocates, given free cases of beer to employees in its network of distributors, promised more ad funding, and released a Bud Light ad that is entirely free of transgender advocacy. The ad’s comments are also disabled to mute more criticism from consumers.
But the company has not taken any steps to disavow the aggressive transgender ideology that was touted by its now-disgraded marketing managers.
That is a difficult task because the transgender ideology has many powerful friends in the White House and in the various agencies that could cause many problems for the multinational beverage firm.
The transgender groups are already threatening the company for not continuing to embrace Mulvaney.
“It is absolutely critical for Anheuser-Busch to stand in solidarity with Dylan and the trans community,” said an April 26 letter from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, adding:
However, when faced with anti-LGBTQ+ and transphobic criticism, Anheuser-Busch’s actions demonstrate a profound lack of fortitude in upholding its values of diversity, equity, and inclusion to employees, customers, shareholders and the LGBTQ+ community …
This not only lends credence to hate-filled rhetoric, it exposes Anheuser-Busch to long-term business impacts with employees and customers increasingly looking for steadfast commitment to LGBTQ+ corporate citizenships.
But the public boycott is well established — and is likely reinforced when public displays of transgenderism remind consumers of the Mulvaney embrace.
“We haven’t been seeing a drop in sales overall, but But Light sales are way down,” Keith Brancato, a manager at Myrna’s Brewery Outlet in New Kensington, Pa., told TribLive.com, adding:
“Jim Stunja of Beer, Bets & Butts in North Huntingdon … some customers have come into the business armed with a list of products to avoid buying.
“They go down the list and say, ‘Anheuser-Busch owns this,’ and then they buy stuff that Anheuser-Busch doesn’t own.”
On May 2, the Wall Street Journal spotlighted part of the dilemma facing Bud Light’s array of complaining beer distributors:
“They didn’t need to take this risk,” one distributor said, adding that he was worried the brand might now swing back in the other direction. “I lost my cowboy bars and now I could lose my gay bars, too.”
Self-proclaimed transgender people comprise less than one percent of the American population, although there is a growing number of Americans who classify themselves as” non-binary” or “queer.”
Gays and lesbians are not transgender, and they comprise perhaps three percent of the population.
Mulvaney’s transgender ideology says governments should arrest people who deny transgender claims and also forcefully suppress the civic and legal recognition of the complementary differences between the two sexes. The authoritarian agenda threatens Americans’ physical health, youthful development, mental health, sciences, and satisfaction in life.
It also seeks to destroy the many single-sex institutions and activities — such as sports, bathrooms, and clubs — that help men and women, gays and lesbians, and young girls and teenagers simultaneously compete and cooperate in a chaotic democracy. The ideology also distracts American citizens and legislators from dealing with damaging civic trends such as declining education scores, rising migration, and slowing innovation.
The ideology also drags many adherents into a lifetime of romantic rejection. That may remain a problem for Mulvaney, who formerly described himself as a gay “theater kid.”
Transgenderism is so toxic to many Americans that 50 percent of middle-income earners are less likely to buy Bud Light beer, according to a Rasmussen poll of 1,041 adults, released on April 18. Roughly one-third of people in each income group say they “strongly support” the boycott, said the poll.
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