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Bud Light sales slide for yet another week in US
Bud Light sales has continued its week-on-week decline for the ninth week in a row following the Dylan Mulvaney controversy in April.
The latest set of figures for last week have shown that Bud Light has fallen by 24.4%, which is an increase on the 23.9% the week before.
Although Modelo is now the US’s number one selling beer, according to the latest set of data, Bud Light’s market share of 9% is still above Modelo’s 8%.
A spokesperson for AB InBev said that Bud Light “remains the number one brand in the U.S. nationally in volume and dollar sales.”
But retail sales have been in steep decline for the past two months with declines since the beginning of April accelerating from 6.9%, to 17% and then from May hitting figures of around 23 to 25% for each week.
Additionally, the impact of the Mulvaney social media endorsement through the on-trade is not yet fully known, due to the difficult nature of compiling data on bar sales, although reports have suggested it could be as significant – or even deeper – than in the off-trade.
Predictions
Analysts have predicted that Bud Light will continue to see a sales dip as a set of US consumers “will not drink a Bud Light for the foreseeable future”.
The report by JP Morgan, and shared with Insider, stated that there would be improvements in sales across the summer in the US for AB InBev, but that across 2023 it could drop by as much as 12 to 13%.
Additionally, AB InBev’s CEO Michel Doukeris said on an earnings call the firm was tripling its budget for Bud Light in the US this summer, as it looks to overcome the backlash following the Dylan Mulvaney endorsement.
It comes as country singer Garth Brooks was asked whether his new bar in Nashville, Tennessee, would serve “all kinds of beer,” including Bud Light.
Instagram post
The issue began after Mulvaney was gifted the Bud Light as part of the company’s ‘March Madness’ contest – and to celebrate the one-year anniversary since Mulvaney began identifying as a woman.
The marketing company Captiv8, who pairs big blue-chip brands with influencers, was claimed by reports to be responsible for introducing Anheuser-Busch to the social media influencer, with two executives involved in the Mulvaney post at AB InBev going on leave in April.
The impact of Dylan Mulvaney’s one Instagram post has resulted in approximately $27 billion lost in market value for AB InBev. On 31 March, AB InBev’s market value was US$134.55bn, but on 1 April, influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted on Instagram about being a Bud Light partner. Since that point AB InBev has declined by almost 20% in market value, hitting around $107 billion by the end of May, according to the Dow Jones Market Tracker.
Sales people for Anheuser-Busch are also reportedly losing as much as $2000 last month compared to a typical May due to the backlash following the endorsement video.