To put it lightly, Bud Light has had a pretty bad year. However, as at least one Anheuser-Busch executive says, a comeback is on the way.
As you know, the company has been in the gutter, so to speak, ever since announcing its partnership with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney back in March of this year. Immediately consumers dropped the once popular beer in favor of ones who didn’t have a connection with the trans movement.
As a result, sales of Bud Light have been in the toilet. Hell, they can hardly give the beer away at this point.
However, Marcel Marcondes, Global Chief Marketing Officer for Anheuser-Busch, has reason to believe that the company will soon begin its climb to the top again.
How? Well, as Marcondes told AdAge on Monday, it has learned its lesson.
He said, “It’s tough to see the controversial and divisive debates that have been happening in the U.S. in the last couple of weeks involving lots of brands and companies, including and especially Bud Light. It’s tough because what we do is bring people together.”
Now, if you’re anything like me, that bit of talk isn’t exactly proof that the company and its marketing department have learned anything except that they are sorry about how things have turned out.
However, Marcondes’ next little bit is more convincing.
Using the same phrasing of “controversial and divisive,” he added that the whole thing had been an “important wake-up call” for marketers in the company and everywhere. It’s a reminder that they have to “first of all” be “very humble.” And secondly, it’s proof that their job is to “really understand our consumers.”
After all, without those consumers, they are nothing.
Now, I do not doubt that Marcondes and perhaps a great deal of his staff have learned this lesson. The question is, will that be enough for Americans to start picking up Bud Light again?
Marcondes seems to think it is. I’m not so sure, at least not quite yet.
