The company behind Bud Light is not holding back in its efforts to dig out of the hole it created by angering customers of its brand.
But despite Anheuser-Busch mounting the biggest Bud Light summer advertising campaign in its history, sales continue to sag. A boycott by consumers angered by a campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney and a viral video in which a marketing executive characterized its consumers in a negative way has driven the slump.
The Wall Street Journal reports that ads for Bud Light have appeared about 3,400 times on national television from June 1 through July 30. The statistics were according to iSpot.tv, an ad-measurement company that tracks TV and streaming-video advertising.
During the same perid last year, Bud Light ads ran just 32 times on national TV, according to iSpot.
Bud Light traditionally runs a larger proportion of ads during football season in the fall.
The WSJ reported that U.S. retail-store dollar sales of the brand fell 26.1% in the week ended July 15 and 26.8% in the week through July 22, compared with their respective year-earlier periods, according to an analysis of NIQ data by Bump Williams Consulting.
During the four weeks ending July 22, Bud Light lost its crown as the top-selling beer in the U.S. to Constellation Brands’ Modelo Especial in May.
Anheuser-Busch last month said it was laying off a large number of workers at its U.S. offices in St. Louis, New York and Los Angeles.
Bump Williams, president and CEO of Bump Williams Consulting, told the WSJ that throwing money at the problem won’t help.
“The Bud Light shopper who’s left the brand has zero interest in coming back,” Williams said, “so you can spend all the money you want, but until you fix the problem—apologize and admit you made a mistake—it’s wasted money.”
