YouGov: Bud Light’s trans ad resonates with target audience, despite Republican backlash
Bud Light’s partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney has led to a fallout with its conservative drinkers and a $5bn drop in the brand’s value. But women and young people have responded positively.
Bud Light’s trans-centric campaign with influencer Dylan Mulvaney
Bud Light has had a big week in the media. On April 1, trans TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video of herself drinking from custom Bud Light cans with her face printed on them. The cans were a gift from sponsor Anheuser-Busch to celebrate Mulvaney’s 365 days of girlhood.
By some measures, the partnership was a fiasco. Conservative ire has caused a viral explosion of social media attention and widespread calls to boycott the Anheuser-Busch brand. Stock prices have dropped, leading the company to lose $5bn of value. Musician Kid Rock expressed his frustration by blowing up a case of Bud Light with an automatic rifle.
According to Republican presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy, Anheuser-Busch’s partnership with Mulvaney is nothing less than “corporate suicide.”
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Has this controversy hurt the brand? Among conservatives, the answer appears to be yes. Data from YouGov BrandIndex, a tracking tool that monitors thousands of brands around the globe, shows that Bud Light’s buzz and impression scores are plummeting among registered Republicans.
Buzz is a net metric based on whether consumers have heard something negative or positive about a brand in the past two weeks. At the end of March, Bud Light’s score was 13.9. Not stellar, but it at least reflects decidedly positive buzz. Two weeks later, the Buzz score had dropped to -2.4, reflecting an overall negative discussion of the beer.
This change, however, is minor compared to the drop in Impression score, which measures overall positive/negative feelings about a brand. Among Republicans, impression dropped from 13.9 to -8.4, for a total drop of 22.3 points. While it has been observed in this case that online controversies do not always translate into lost sales, purchase consideration among the same group has also fallen from 16.2% to 12%.
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Despite grim numbers among one group, the marketing campaign may still have been a success. In an interview with podcast Make Yourself At Home, Bud Light marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid explained her strategy. As she sees it, the only hope for the declining brand is to attract more young drinkers and, specifically, more young female drinkers.
Her “inclusive” marketing strategy, which involved the partnership with Mulvaney, was aimed at changing the “fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor” that has characterized Bud Light.
When examining the data among Heinerscheid’s target demographics, Bud Light’s “corporate suicide” looks more like an advertising triumph. The chart below shows the change in Impression scores since the end of March for four groups. Among Republicans, as we’ve seen, overall feelings about the brand have declined steeply, which has dragged down the overall impression score among all US consumers.
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However, among Heinerscheid’s target audiences, sentiment has improved. Impression among 29-and-unders rose from 5.2 on March 30 to 7.9 on April 13. The most dramatic shift, however, has been among young women. Before the Mulvaney controversy, women under 30 had decidedly negative feelings towards the “fratty” beer brand. Since then, the beer’s Impression score has risen from -6 to a net positive score of 1.0 with this group.
Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. A brand’s Ad Awareness score is based on the question: “Which of the following consumer brands have you seen an advertisement for in the past two weeks?” Data from surveys of adults aged 21 years and above residing in the US from March 30 and April 13, 2023. Scores are based on a four-week moving average.