Anheuser-Busch Lays Off Marketing Employees After Bud Light Fiasco

Amid ongoing backlash from the Bud Light boycott, Anheuser-Busch recently announced that it was planning to lay off 2 percent of its U.S. workforce, including marketing and corporate employees.

In a statement obtained by CNN on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch said that the layoffs will not include frontline workers but will "simplify and reduce layers within its organization."

"Today we took the very difficult but necessary decision to eliminate a number of positions across our corporate organization," Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth said in the statement.

The announcement came as Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light continue to face criticism and a boycott after partnering with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer and activist, in April.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Whitworth said that the layoffs would be in corporate and marketing roles in New York, Los Angeles and St. Louis.

Bud Light sent a personalized can to Mulvaney to promote her transition to womanhood, but many conservatives disagreed with the decision and called for people to buy other beer instead of Bud Light.

Shortly after the boycott began, Bud Light experienced a decline in sales, which has continued over the past several months. For the week ending June 8, which included the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Bud Light sales declined by 23.6 percent compared to the same week in 2022, according to Nielsen IQ sales data from Bump Williams Consulting, provided to the Daily Caller.

The week prior, ending on June 1, Newsweek obtained data from Bump Williams Consulting showing a decline in Bud Light sales of 28 percent compared to the same period a year earlier.

Last month, Whitworth responded to the boycott by announcing new plans to assist frontline workers and wholesalers.

"We recognize that over the last two months, the discussion surrounding our company and Bud Light has moved away from beer, and this has impacted our consumers, our business partners, and our employees," Whitworth said in a statement.

Prior to the layoffs announced Thursday, a former Anheuser-Busch executive told Newsweek that he expected sales to continue to decline amid the ongoing boycott.

"Unfortunately, I think it's going to be a long way to go to get back the market share they lost and a lot of headwind in front of them," Anson Frericks, the former president of operations for Anheuser-Busch, told Newsweek this month.

Newsweek reached out to Anheuser-Busch via email for comment.