Alcoholic beverage giant Anheuser-Busch announced that it was laying off hundreds of employees as the ripple effects from the disastrous Dylan Mulvaney marketing decision continue to reverberate amid falling sales.
The company said that it would be cutting 350 corporate jobs across its workforce, reductions that come after longtime customers reacted negatively to the ill-fated decision by a “woke” female Harvard-educated marketing exec to partner with the transgender social media influencer to hawk the popular Bud Light brand. Customers chose to express their disapproval with their wallets which has been a boon for the company’s competitors.
The layoffs will impact less than 2 percent of the brewer’s U.S. workforce of around 18,000 employees and won’t affect brewery and warehouse staff, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“While we never take these decisions lightly, we want to ensure that our organization continues to be set for future long-term success,” CEO Brendan Whitworth said in a statement. “These corporate structure changes will enable our teams to focus on what we do best—brewing great beer for everyone.”
Few could have predicted the intensely negative reaction to the Mulvaney spots which came at a time of intensifying public pushback against the relentless full-frontal assault of the left and its transgender agenda, a lifestyle that is found to be repulsive by millions of Americans.
The brainstorm by then-Bud Light Marketing Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid, who sought to give the once-popular brew a reboot of what she described as the brand’s “fratty, kind of out-of-touch” image by partnering with the controversial TikToker, may have seemed like a genius move at the time, but the fallout has been nothing short of catastrophic and will likely serve as a case study in business schools for decades to come, if not longer.
As the affected Anheuser-Busch workers were forced into unemployment, Mulvaney celebrated 500 days of “being a girl” in a seven-minute video posted to social media that was recorded on the influencer’s trip to Paris.
“Hi. Today would be 500 days of being a girl if I was still keeping up with that series,” said Mulvaney, who was sporting blonde hair and wearing a green dress while sitting on a bed.
“[Day] 500 is dedicated to my younger self who didn’t get to celebrate so many awesome discoveries because I was just hoping to get by,” the 26-year-old added. “Today is actually day 9,705 of being a woman, because I’ve always been one.”
Mulvaney did not mention the Bud Light backlash which has seen Anheuser-Busch lose $27 billion in market cap since the spot first aired during the March Madness college basketball tourney.
The corporate cuts come weeks after the decline in sales also claimed the jobs of hundreds of bottling plant employees at two factories that are being shuttered by the Ardagh group which owns the facilities in North Carolina and Lousiana that produced the bottles for Budweiser and Bud Light.
The company didn’t give a reason for closing the locations other than it being a part of a “Multi-year Performance Optimization Program” but Raleigh NBC affiliate WRAL reported that the local plant was the victim of the Bud Light-Mulvaney marketing fiasco.
The company didn’t give a reason for closing the locations other than it being a part of a “Multi-year Performance Optimization Program” but Raleigh NBC affiliate WRAL reported that the local plant was the victim of the Bud Light-Mulvaney marketing fiasco.
All of the ads were ridiculed on social media as the marketing team continues to post its L’s, and to make matters worse, Bud Light has toppled out of America’s top ten favorite beers amid reports of rebates and deep discounts that are failing to move a product that many now view as “tranny fluid” among other unflattering names for the once golden brand.
If trends hold, there could be more layoffs in the future for the company if sales don’t recover.