Anheuser-Busch Still Does Not Get Right from Wrong

May 8, 2023

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by Mark Schwendau

A new YouTube video was released by Anheuser-Busch (A-B) in an attempt to reverse some of the damage done by their former marketing director Alissa Heinerscheid in conjunction with transvestite Dylan Mulvaney with his (her?) 10.8 million followers on social media platforms. The beer maker ignited a firestorm when it celebrated Mulvaney’s “365 Days of Girlhood” early last month.

The only problem is, in the new video, they disabled your First Amendment right to free speech by blocking comments. More proof, they still just do not get it!

BUD LIGHT SHOWER BEER | EASY TO DRINK, EASY TO ENJOY:30 – Bud Light

Now I get the fact that their new acting marketing director, Todd Allen, is probably afraid of haters and trolls posting negative comments as a good reason for disabling comments. But, if you are a true marketing professional, you have to understand two things:

Those people are clearly a minority trying to be funny or gain attention for themselves. Only a few are probably true haters of sexual deviancy the left label “transphobes”.

But the second most important thing is this new video received over 10 million viewers in just 4 days! That is too high a number to be classified as “curiosity seekers”. This is a sign of former customers looking for an apology and a reason to come back!

Now, one month later as the Bud Light malaise continues, Anheuser-Busch InBev is‘ offering free beer to distributors’ to offset losses showing they still are just not getting it.

We have written about this ongoing saga before here: “Anheuser-Busch Has a Third Swing and a Miss in Marketing.”

“Has Bud Light’s Marketing VP Been Fired?”

In one of those two articles, I wrote that the best way for A-B to get past this would be to apologize and promise to never address any more social or political hot-button issues again. Thus far, they have opted not to do that.

Their sales are now down somewhere between 17% to 26%, depending on what markets you look at (retail storefronts or dining establishments). Other products of A-B are suffering collateral damage from the Bud Light boycott.

Heinerscheid has been officially said to have been put on a “leave of absence.”

Alissa Heinerscheid may or may not still be employed by A-B but working as a VP (Vice President) for A-B’s Bud Light marketing, her salary was reported at around $414,196 per year. That’s a lot of money to get something so very wrong.

Watching Heinerscheid in her social media videos last month I was struck by three things immediately:

Her sudden move to take the whole product line “woke” without any apparent input from its customer base in focus group studies.
Her admission was that Bud Light sales have been in decline and going down for quite some time (of some 20%), and she was hired with the mission of bringing those sales back (as a businesswoman).
Her seemingly insulting way of addressing the 80% who were still remaining brand loyal. – “Bud Light has been a brand of kind of fratty, kind of out of touch humor, and it was really important we have another approach.” – Alissa Heinerscheid

Bud Light could have hired any number of Americans for half a million dollars a year working remotely (with or without a college degree), and they would have saved A-B billions of dollars in lost sales and company valuation.

Alissa would have done well to consider the following points before her transvestite ad campaign move:

I used to drink both Bud Light and Busch Light until I realized it was the source of some terrible headaches. After that, a German friend in Wisconsin sent me an article from the “Milwaukee Journal” explaining the way Germans brew beer. There are four natural ingredients. Today, many domestic canned and bottled beers have as many as 22 ingredients and most of those are for shelf-life without refrigeration.
Many people who began to get sick off of canned and bottled domestic beers shifted to local craft breweries where everything is brewed fresh and on draught. Local craft breweries are spreading like wildfires around America. In my small rural town of 4,000, we have had our own since 2016.
All the proof you needed that having a transvestite as the center of a Bud Light ad campaign was a bad move was in the meteoric rise of John Rich’s song “Progress” of last summer.

“Fox & Friends: The song hits number 1.

CONCLUSION:

I am German-Austrian and my namesake comes from a small village in Austria. I have been over there to visit twice. One could say I know a thing or two about drinking beer. I do not drink to get drunk or buzzed. I explain my roots, saying, “To people like me, this is like mother’s milk.” By the way, German and Austrian beers generally have much higher alcohol content than American beers, so drinking here is nothing like drinking over there!

I drink for the beer’s flavor and the fellowship of the people I meet at the bar.

Two things I love most about this world are critical thinking and humor, leading to laughter at funny things.

This would be a good example…

So Bud Light vice president of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid (an obvious progressive liberal) decides it would be a good idea to hire on a newly minted transvestite woman to up the sagging sales of Bud Light to capture his or her 10 million online followers. In her own online social media interview Heinerscheid then says this:

“It means having a campaign that is inclusive and is lighter and brighter and appeals to both women and men.”

Did she just admit to only two genders?

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Mark S. Schwendau is a retired technology professor who has always had a sideline in news-editorial writing where his byline has been, “Bringing little known news to people who simply want to know the truth.” He classifies himself as a Christian conservative who God cast to be a realist. His website is www.IDrawIWrite.Tech.

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