Bud Light says it will avoid more boycotts by never standing for anything

Dylan Mulvaney’s Bud Light video Photo: Instagram screenshot

After the immense backlash Bud Light endured over its tiny partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, it seems the brand has decided the best course of action from here on out is to avoid supporting anyone or anything that could make people angry.

Bud Light will now “stay in our lane,” Jason Warner, CEO of the European branch of Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, told the Telegraph.

Related:

Warner said the company plans to avoid all controversial issues because, when people are drinking Bud Light, they don’t want to think about anything but fun.

Stay connected to your community

Connect with the issues and events that impact your community at home and beyond by subscribing to our newsletter.

“The major learning was, ‘Hey, I want to enjoy [Bud Light] when I’m not having to think about all of this, and I want to enjoy it with my friends. I want sports, I want music. I want fun. I want friends. I want everyone to be happy together’. Unfortunately, the output of that was the complete opposite, which is not what we’re there to do,” he said.

He added that the intense backlash to the company’s partnership with Mulvaney is something that wouldn’t happen with other products.

“There are very few categories in the world where people care that much,” he said. “I don’t think people would look at mayonnaise that way, or care that much about mayonnaise, but they care about their beer.”

The brand’s brief partnership with Mulvaney not only angered anti-LGBTQ+ folks, but it ended up causing outrage within the LGBTQ+ community as well due to what many felt was the company’s disappointing response to the hate and its failure to stand up for Mulvaney.

On April 1, Mulvaney posted a 50-second video to Instagram showing off some custom Bud Light cans with her face on them, as part of a brand partnership with the beer company.

In response, conservatives posted videos of themselves dumping out Bud Light beer and shooting up cases of it . Elected Republicans claimed that Mulvaney was a pedophile (without any evidence at all) and said that the global balance of power would be upset by Mulvaney’s Instagram video. Others said that they were boycotting Bud Light, often switching to other LGBTQ+-friendly brands.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) opened a probe into the brand partnership, alleging it violated advertising rules because people under the legal drinking age might have seen the beer can video.

But Anheuser-Busch’s weak response to the backlash led to anger among LGBTQ+ people as well. The company released a statement in April 2023 saying that it “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people… We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

Meanwhile, Mulvaney said she was “having trouble sleeping” after becoming the target of so much hatred for the past month and a half, leading to criticism that Anheuser-Busch left her out to dry.

In response to all of this, several LGBTQ+ bars stopped serving Bud Light, Colorado’s gay Gov. Jared Polis (D) announced his lifelong boycott on the brand, and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) kicked Anheuser-Busch off the top of its corporate equality index (CEI), a measure of various companies’ LGBTQ+-inclusive workplace practices.

The collective anger at Bud Light caused the company to lose about $1.4 billion, though it is reportedly rebounding.