It’s the kind of penetration that turns sophisticated mass marketing into super-fucking-complicated mass marketing. But it also speaks to the peculiar challenge of managing a brand that is consumed by everyone: male/female, gay/straight, old/young, north/south. That kind of penetration produces dollars. And a third aged over 50 have had one too. Half of all American adults under the age of 50 have drunk a Bud Light in the last three months. And a lot of that awareness turns into purchase too. It operates at the giddy 90th percentile of brand awareness, usually reserved for airlines and the mobile phone networks. With that kind of scale there is always the associated challenge of marketing to the masses.Įvery American knows Bud Light. Last year AB InBev sold $4.8bn worth of the stuff in America. It is, easily, the best-selling beer in America. But nothing could be further from the truth. To British eyes, Bud Light might appear a minor, speciality beer. So why does this controversy appear to outdo all other recent examples? To understand the blowback we need to look at all the ingredients. Despite most competitors registering significant increases in beer sales in April, Bud Light is down 21% versus March. And unlike many social media scandals this is more than just a perceptual shift. YouGov’s American brand tracking shows Bud Light has lost 75% of its popularity with the general population. What is surprising is the degree to which the controversy has not only maintained its position in the news cycle but increased its impact on the brand in recent weeks. It’s the reaction to the reaction that drove the boycott, and in doing so, created more reaction. But Binet’s point should move us from the burning barn scenario in which marketers leap on top of each other’s shoulders to shout ever louder about the imminent destruction of Bud Light. Not doing any harm is very different from calculating the lost impact that a great campaign could have had. There is a massive, implicit opportunity cost for any brand launching a bad campaign. Take care with that observation, however. Whenever something like a Mulvaney moment occurs, I remember the sage perspective of Les Binet, that he has never seen an ad damage a brand. The truth, as usual, sits somewhere in the messy middle. And I’ve seen posts suggesting that “all publicity is good publicity” and predicting the coverage will be great for sales (total horseshit). I’ve seen posts linking the promotion to a drop in AB InBev’s share price (total horseshit). Marketers are all over the place, once again, in their assessment of Mulvaney’s impact on Bud Light. Despite its small, innocuous origins, it has exploded into the biggest brand crisis of the year so far. For a month we have been following, debating and disagreeing about the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney saga. And the world moves on.Ī post shared by Dylan Mulvaney this time. The top of the funnel gets an injection of awareness. The celebrities in question get somewhere between $10,000 and $50,000 depending on their fame and fan numbers. A brand sprays its money across a wide range of people with decent follower counts. Just one of thousands of ‘endorsements’ that take place daily in the atomised world of digital marketing in 2023. Barely 20 seconds after opening a beer, Mulvaney was waving goodbye and the Instagram post was done. In the post that accompanied the video, Mulvaney mentioned a new contest in which one lucky Bud Light drinker could win $15,000. And thanks to her friends at AB InBev she was doing it with a six pack of the eponymous low-calorie beer. Transgender actress and TikTok celebrity Dylan Mulvaney was celebrating a full year of her womanhood. “Hi! Impressive carrying skills, right?” says an overdressed twentysomething as she sits down smiling into the smartphone camera.
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