If you want to assess the hefty price of being woke, you should talk to Keith Murphy.
Murphy is the owner of Murphy’s Taproom, a small chain of two restaurants in the New Hampshire towns of Bedford and Manchester. According to the New Hampshire Journal, sales of Bud Light are down roughly 20 percent in both his restaurants.
The reason? Dylan Mulvaney, of course.
“It was an unforced error,” Murphy told the Journal regarding the Bud Light viral advertising campaign that featured the transgender influencer and celebrated his “365 Days of Girlhood” series of video.
The brand sent personalized cans with Mulvaney’s face on it to him — and they’ve now become the face of Bud.
The New Hampshire Journal’s headline said it all: “Bud Light Still Losing Customers Over ‘Woke’ Marketing.”
“Some people vehemently disagree with Bud Light endorsing transgenderism; some people don’t care. Most people just wonder why Bud jumped into such a controversial issue when there was no reason to do it,” Murphy said.
Now, to be fair, Murphy is a Republican state Senator, and these results weren’t seen uniformly throughout New Hampshire — a purple state.
“I drove to all our stores from Concord down to Salem, and I asked all the bartenders if Bud Light sales were down,” said Tom Boucher, the CEO of Great NH Restaurants, Inc.
“They said, ‘Meh, not really.’ When I told them Bud Light was down more than 20 percent, they couldn’t believe it.”
However, the numbers don’t lie — and the numbers for April were brutal for Bud Light.
According to Beer Business Daily, a beer industry trade outlet, Anheuser-Busch saw its volume decrease by 12.5 percent in the month of April, with Bud Light leading the way.
“Bud Light was down 21.4 percent while Coors Light was up 10.9 percent and Miller Lite up 12.8 percent,” the Monday report said. “Budweiser was down 11.5 percent while Yuengling was up 14.7 percent and Coors Banquet up 20.5 percent.”
April scan numbers are in, and it’s not pretty. https://t.co/rQpbewD1Vx pic.twitter.com/DtZbqQLKKQ
— Beer Business Daily (@BeerBizDaily) May 8, 2023
In short, while Bud Light was down, all of its competitors were up — a sign not of changing drinking habits, but rather changing drink preferences.
And meanwhile, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that Bud Light sales are down, down, down:
No one is buying Bud Light at the Red Sox game pic.twitter.com/evTMApnYGx
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 4, 2023
Sam’s Club’s shelves are filled with cases of Anheuser-Busch beer in Port Huron, Michigan.
Coors Light pallet is EMPTY.
Miller Lite pallet only has 3 remaining cases. #BudLight pallet is stacked to the top.
Hey @Anheuser_Busch, how’s that woke ad campaign going? pic.twitter.com/cRvuz8L9P1
— 100% FED UP! (@100PercFEDUP) May 1, 2023
Weekend experiment. Beers in cooler at Nashville area event. Pick which beer you want. No one would take the Bud Light all night long. Big issue going forward for Bud Light is many don’t even want to be seen with product. They just pick another brand. pic.twitter.com/UleRAjdLTc
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 8, 2023
And the problem isn’t going away. If anything, it’s getting worse for Anheuser-Busch.
According to Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ data cited by the New York Post, sales of Bud Light were down 23.4 percent the week of April 29, more than the 21.4 percent drop it suffered a week earlier. Not only that, but Anheuser-Busch’s other brands were suffering as well.
“It’s not just a Bud Light issue,” said Bump Williams, chief executive of the eponymous firm. “It’s an Anheuser-Busch portfolio problem now.”
All because they decided to go woke and are now furiously (and unsuccessfully) trying to stop the “go broke” part of the equation. Nice work.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
