Anheuser-Busch CEO Issues Underhanded Threat to Boycotters: Start Buying Bud Light Again or Blue Collar Workers Will Be Targeted
You can’t blame Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth for a lack of creativity.
On April 1, transgender “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney posted a video to his Instagram account featuring a can of Bud Light with his face on it. It was part of a promotional deal with the brand, which a now-unemployed VP of marketing said had been too “fratty” in its previous advertisements and needed to embrace “inclusivity.”
A boycott by conservatives ensued. Since then, Whitworth has done everything short of 1) pointing to the date of the Instagram video and insisting it was an April Fool’s joke or 2) saying the words “we’re sorry.”
First, he penned a non-apology apology letter:
— Anheuser-Busch (@AnheuserBusch) April 14, 2023
When that didn’t work, he said that anyone calling the Dylan Mulvaney ad campaign an ad campaign featuring Dylan Mulvaney is a purveyor of “misinformation.” Don’t believe your lying eyes, ears or social media feed — the whole thing was just “misinformation!”
That hasn’t worked, and Bud Light sales have dropped by nearly a third. So, Whitworth has a new line for boycotters: Buy our beer or blue-collar workers are going to lose their jobs.
According to Fortune, in an interview with CBS late last month, Whitworth — who has done literally everything possible to evade responsibility for the Mulvaney disaster — told CBS that “one thing that I’d love to make extremely clear is that impact is my responsibility.” And that, if people keep not buying Bud Light, particularly during the summer months, the mistake that was his responsibility could cost people some jobs.
When “(a)sked what troubled him the most, he said it was his 18,000 workers and the additional 47,000 people employed by its distributors. That number doesn’t count the farmers he said were also affected by the boycott,” Fortune reported.
“It’s the impact honestly on the employees that weighs the most on me,” he said.
To translate that out of corporate speak: Jobs are on the line because of Whitworth’s mistake. But the prospect of those lost jobs isn’t enough to actually move Whitworth to apologize for the campaign — or to resign — despite the fact his “responsibility … weighs” on him.
And, if this is his “responsibility,” as he put it, he owes it to those 65,000 employees to do both. To put this in perspective, as business outlet Benzinga noted in an article Monday, the beer has fallen to 14th in a popularity survey conducted by YouGov, despite being among the most popular brews in previous years.
“This seismic shift in popularity jeopardizes the livelihoods of the 65,000 people whose economic well-being is intricately tied to Anheuser-Busch InBev’s success,” Benzinga noted.
And the bad news continues for the brand. NielsenIQ and Bump Williams Consulting sales data obtained by Newsweek showed that, during the four weeks ending July 1, Bud Light’s volume sales were down 31.2 percent compared to last year.
In other words, the boycott isn’t ending. It’s the new normal for Bud Light. Because of Whitworth and the corporate environment he’s fostered, conservatives view the beer as an emblem of consumer wokeness, up there with Nike and Starbucks.
Meanwhile, liberals and LGBT activists have criticized the company for ditching Mulvaney after the crisis hit. And, let’s face it, no one is coming back to Bud Light for the quality; it tastes pretty much like every other major-label light lager.
Whitworth’s latest response seems to be the genteel, corporate-speak version of the headline on the infamous National Lampoon cover from the 1970s, featuring a mutt with a revolver pointed at its head: “If You Don’t Buy this Magazine, We’ll Shoot This Dog.” Only, he means it.
Will he apologize for the Mulvaney ad and how he and other Anheuser-Busch executives handled it? No. He will take “responsibility” for it — as if we conservatives were somehow apportioning it to executives at Miller Lite or Yuengling. But an apology is a bit too far. So is a resignation, apparently.
What Brendan Whitworth is telling you, the consumer, is this: If you don’t stop ignoring his mistakes and his executives’ decisions to push wokeness in your face, people aside from him (and most of those executives, too) will lose their jobs.
His responsibility is now your responsibility, America. Buy Bud Light or the blue-collar workers get it. Even the farmers. Think about the farmers, you heartless conservative plebes!
Here’s an idea: If it’s your responsibility, Mr. Whitworth, how about you resign and urge the board to replace you with someone who openly promises not to use your company’s brands to push a political or social ideology?
Don’t go on CBS and say it’s the bottlers, the drivers and the farmers that are going to be affected. Go to the boardroom and tender your resignation. Otherwise, keep quiet, reap the consequences, hope this blows over and that your company’s massive ad to promote Bud Light somehow restores the brand’s market share. Everyone has had quite enough of your creative ways to try and mitigate the consequences of the Mulvaney disaster without uttering the two words — “we’re sorry” — that should have been uttered long ago.
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