One can almost feel bad for Bud Light. The brand is caught in the middle of a larger war being fought by global anti-capitalists and the bosses of capitalism: consumers.
The Wall Street Journal ran a deep dive article last week exploring “how Bud Light blew it,” but it somehow missed the most important part of the story.
As most people already know, the world’s most popular light lager has seen a collapse in sales following a boycott prompted by a March Madness ad campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The Journal’s chart depicting the fall in Bud Light sales speaks for itself, and the company’s delayed and tepid response to the uproar only seemed to make matters worse.
This isn’t Anheuser-Busch’s first foray into controversial social issues.
The Journal’s Jennifer Maloney points out that the company has been engaging in social equity-themed advertising for years, including a 2021 Michelob Ultra ad featuring transgender track star Cecé Telfer and a 2022 Bud Light Canada campaign for Pride Month displaying various pronouns .
What Maloney fails to mention in her article is why beer companies — not just Bud Light — are suddenly courting controversial social issues such as nonbinary gender, transgenderism, and third-wave feminism.
The answer is simple: The rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance as the dominant strain of “stakeholder capitalism” has incentivized corporations to curry favor with ESG rating firms , even if it means alienating their consumers.