Bud Light Powerless to Stop Backlash Against Company—Marketing Strategist

There is nothing that Bud Light can do to "ultimately... change the tide right now" as it grapples with an ongoing backlash and calls for a boycott over its partnership with a transgender influencer, a marketing strategist has said.

Emma Ferrara, chief business development officer at Viral Nation, who coordinates partnerships between leading brands and top influencers, cautioned against the "knee-jerk" reactions she had seen from the company since the controversy began, and told Newsweek that jumping on trends and social justice campaigns could appear "inauthentic" for a beer company steeped in American history.

Since Dylan Mulvaney posted to her social media followers that Bud Light had sent her a personalized can with her face on to mark 365 days since her transition, the brand has faced criticism of alienating its traditional audience, and the row has crystalized a broader debate about the acceptance of transgender individuals in public life.

Following the online boycott calls, supporters of Kari Lake, the Donald Trump-backed GOP candidate for Arizona governor in 2022, refused to drink the beer at an open bar at a rally in Iowa. Meanwhile, a bar owner in Kentucky said he had noticed the drink sparking rows between patrons and other licensed venues have withdrawn the beer from sale.

The partnership has drawn public displays of anger. Musician Kid Rock took a gun to several cases of Bud Light in a viral video, while a Republican state senator in Missouri posted a video of himself smashing a can with a baseball bat outside his state's Capitol building.

The debate over the partnership has also attracted commentary from many prominent figures, including Donald Trump Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as celebrities such as Joe Rogan and Caitlyn Jenner. Even the White House has waded in on the controversy.

Earlier this week, it emerged that Bud Light had seen a 17 percent decline in sales revenue since the outrage began, with the volume of beer sales down 21 percent for the week ending April 15.

Conservatives who had called for a boycott of the brand saw it as a sign their actions were working, however a poll conducted on behalf of Newsweek found an overwhelming majority of Bud Light drinkers said they would continue to do so.

"There's not one thing that you can do that's ultimately going to change the tide right now," Ferrara said. "This is a very tumultuous moment, and if I were Bud Light, I think we need to just not knee-jerk back and forth."

She suggested that the partnership appeared "like it was jumping on a trend versus making it perhaps something a little bit more meaningful," adding that regardless of which community the brand was attempting to appeal to, "it always comes back to: is it authentic? And is it credible?"

Ferrara described Bud Light as "a behemoth of a brand" with "a vast customer base that's really been historically divided more or less evenly when you think about the two sides of the country's increasingly stark partisan divide."

However, she said the beer—owned by parent company Anheuser-Busch, which also owns Budweiser and Busch—had an identity that was associated "more with the Clydesdales, Americana, Superbowl commercials, rather than social justice."

"When you have these large corporations that have such a historic brand identity, it can appear inauthentic when, all of a sudden, they're getting involved in these social campaigns—and it makes it appear as if they've lost track of the consumer, of who their core consumer is," Ferrara added.

That brand identity was something that the 161-year-old St. Louis, Missouri-based brewery had utilized when reacting to the controversy. On April 14 Budweiser released an advert infused with patriotic imagery from around the U.S. and featuring one of the company's Clydesdale horses.

But following its release, it received criticism for either appearing to pander to those outraged by the Bud Light partnership, or for not doing enough to quell the furor. Ferrara commented that brands needed "to really develop a thoughtful and nuanced strategy" when it came to planning partnerships, and thought they could serve such disparate groups with well-researched campaigns.

Perhaps another such example of a "knee-jerk" reaction from Anheuser-Busch was the news this week that a second top marketing executive on the company had been placed on leave, after it was revealed that Bud Light's vice president for marketing had stepped back from their role.

Noting the White House's claims that executives at the company had received death threats over the controversy, Ferrara expressed sympathy, saying the reaction was "probably affecting them and their ability to show up at work," as well as be a "valuable contributor."

"If, in fact, they were let go, I don't think that that's necessarily the right route," she said. "I think it's just about having the right process internally, and having the right strategy and lens." While Ferrara did not think the company was necessarily scapegoating those who had overseen the partnership, she argued that "they're being very reactive to a lot of the things that are happening."

Newsweek approached Anheuser-Busch via email for comment on Thursday.

A person familiar with the company told trade magazine Ad Age that the recent weeks had been a "rollercoaster" for the firm's leadership and that there was "definitely a feel of panic within the organization."

Anheuser-Busch has made few public comments during the controversy. On April 14, Brendan Whitworth, the brewery's CEO, issued an official statement, saying: "We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer."