If Companies Have Convictions, They Need to Stand By Them
A month ago, the podcast Make Yourself at Home featured an interview with Bud Light’s VP of marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid. During the interview, she offered a surprisingly frank assessment of the company—one that is inarguably true.
"I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light… This brand is in decline. It has been in decline for a very long time. And if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light.
"So I had this super clear mandate; we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand… What does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone."
It’s really important to keep this in mind, because it informs everything that followed.
Making good on this promise, Heinerscheid reached out to Dylan Mulvaney, a winsome 26-year-old trans woman with 13 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, by sending her a personalized can with her picture. Dylan, decked out in a black dress and elbow-high satin gloves, posted an amusing video with the beer, joking that she didn’t understand sports, but gushing about Bud Light. In a flash, thirteen million followers were given some of the most positive press any company can get—thirteen million followers who, presumably, Bud Light has a very hard time reaching. In marketing terms, it gets a 100%, no-notes score. For the price of an expensive dinner, Bud Light probably did more to enhance its brand than any single ad campaign in the past five years with an audience it couldn’t have reached through conventional advertising.
Of course, that’s not the end of the story. Because we can’t have nice things in this country, Dylan and her fun little video became the subject of searing attacks by cultural warriors on the right. (I don’t want to link to the response, but it’s easy enough to find online.) Bud Light and Heinerscheid took most of the fire, though of course Dylan was also attacked brutally along the way. (Keep in mind her sin was being a trans woman and enjoying a beer.)
Bud Light and its parent company AB InBev have remained completely silent throughout the unfolding disaster. The sole public act they’ve taken is to sack Heinerscheid and her boss, Daniel Blake. This has only added gasoline to the fire: right-wingers want the company to abase itself and attack LGBTQ customers; meanwhile, those LGBTQ customers and their allies see in Bud’s silence the hollowness of their outreach in the first place.
(Of all the parties involved, Dylan herself seems to be the only one behaving admirably. Yesterday afternoon, she posted another video that talked less about Bud Light and her attackers than her own experience, along with a wish that people would quit dehumanizing each other. She doesn’t have a billion-dollar marketing team behind her, yet her response was full of the grace and humanity Bud should also be echoing.)
I haven’t weighed in on this story because it got so much attention, most of it not really beer-related. But obviously, despite those who say “all I care about is the beer,” it is about beer, too. People make beer, people sell and distribute beer, and people drink beer. Beer can’t separate itself from the pathologies of society. This is where we are in the United States right now. Companies like Disney and brands like Bud Light that have very good reputations in red America can find themselves in deep trouble with conservatives if they don’t toe a straights-only view (or go silent on the matter).
Last week, Bud Light sales dropped by 17%. Sales will stabilize eventually, though the company has probably permanently damaged its relationship with the most reactionary drinkers. And what did they gain for it? Alissa Heinerscheid was right—it’s a dying brand, and this is a massive unforced error that will hasten its decline. But the mistake wasn’t trying to reach a broader base of younger, less White, less straight drinkers. They’re the only future the company has for growth.
The mistake was capitulating to people whose own interests were misaligned with Bud’s. One of the signature moment in the backlash came when Kid Rock shot cans of Bud Light in an angry, profane video. But of course, Kid Rock was looking for a way to promote Kid Rock. The “backlash” was a performative moment in a years-long parade of attacks on the LGBTQ community. Politicians and celebrities wait for opportunities like this to jump into the headlines.
AB InBev was stupid because they should have known that the usual charlatans were going to use their support to attack trans people. In 2023, when you reach out to marginalized groups, you are taking a stand. They’re stupid because they didn’t back Heinerscheid and trans people, putting their short term interests above their long-term interests. And they committed the inexcusable moral harm of placing a 26-year-old in the national crosshairs and not defending her. Sending a can to Dylan was brilliant; the whole affair since then has been a disgrace.
Some years ago, I argued that it’s bad business for companies to take political positions. That was correct then, but it’s not anymore. The very act of reaching out to your own customers has become a political act. Now companies are going to have to define their values and own them, and when they find themselves under attack, be prepared to defend them. Depressingly, we customers are going to have to start paying attention to where our dollars are going in this whole long war. All of this sucks, and I wish we lived in a different world. But sometimes you get a war even when you didn’t want it.