Bud Light is struggling to get off the mat.
The company is desperate to rebuild its brand.
And one Bud Light exec made a stunning move after the company’s “woke” fail.
Bud Light still has not recovered after its disastrous brand deal with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The company experienced a 30% drop in sales, which caused parent company AB InBev to suffer a dramatic stock hit.
Now a top executive is falling on his sword in light of the company’s struggles.
Marketer moves on
Chief Marketing Officer Benoit Garbe “will be resigning at the end of the year in order to embark on a new chapter in his career,” according to a statement released by the company.
Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth added, “Today we announced key changes to our U.S. leadership team that reduce layers within our organization and better enable our top commercial leaders to drive our business and legacy forward…These senior leadership changes will accelerate our return to growth as we continue to focus on what we do best—brewing great beer for everyone and earning our place in moments that matter.”
Garbe’s resignation follows the ouster of marketing VP Alyssa Heinersheid, the employee responsible for the Mulvaney sponsorship.
Prior to the controversy, Heinersheid admitted in an interview, “I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light. And it was, this brand is in decline, it’s been in decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light.”
Heinersheid’s big idea was to lean into “wokeness.”
She continued, “So I had this super clear mandate…Like we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. And what I brought to that was a belief in, ‘Okay, what does evolve and elevate mean?’ It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and appeals to women and to men. And representation is sort of at the heart of evolution…And we had this hangover. I mean, Bud Light had been a brand of fratty kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
Thumbing their noses at their “fratty” customers is why Anheuser-Busch execs are being shuffled.
Bud Light also attempted to revive the brand by partnering with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but the move has not yet panned out the way the company had hoped.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
