Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch lost more than $3 billion dollars due to their controversial brand partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Anheuser-Busch stock has plummeted since last Thursday, when calls to boycott the brand went viral, after conservative musician Kid Rock shot up cases of the brew with an automatic rifle.
Country stars John Rich and Travis Tritt also joined the boycott, and consumers nationwide have reportedly turned their backs on the top-selling beer brand.
BUD shares tanked to $64.23 on Wednesday morning, as sales nationwide dramatically dropped over the weekend, according to Fox News Digital.
Missouri bar owner Jeff Fitter told the outlet that demand for Anheuser-Busch products fell by 30-50% over the weekend, while a pub in New York City saw Bud Light sales plunge up to 70%.
“In Bud Light’s effort to be inclusive, they excluded almost everybody else, including their traditional audience,” Fitter remarked.
The Mulvaney campaign was the brainchild of Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, who claimed that the brand has been “in decline for a really long time,” in a disastrous March 30 interview.
She said that her mandate “to evolve and elevate” Bud Light meant shifting the brand’s image with a campaign “that’s truly inclusive, and feels lighter and brighter and different, and appeals to women and to men.”
Heinerscheid went on to trash the company’s current image, which reflects most of their current demographic of consumers.
“We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach,” she commented.
Branding expert Michael Stone said that Heinerscheid’s remarks were a mistake.
“She didn’t need to go that far and trash the prior campaigns,” he scolded. “She could have said we are moving on to reach the demographic we want to reach and to communicate a different message.”
Kid Rock’s crystal clear message of “F–k Bud Light, and f–k Anheuser-Busch,” has seemingly been resonating with the nation.
Shock jock Howard Stern is “dumbfounded” by the musician’s reaction.
“I wish I could call Kid Rock and have him come on the show and just tell me ‘Why are you so upset about this? How is it hurtful?’ I don’t know why he got so upset,” Stern questioned.
“Kid Rock, I know him. He’s got a great life. He transitioned from some kid in Michigan to a rock superstar! I’m really dumbfounded by why someone would care so much that they would blow up a can of Bud Light and say, ‘F— Anheuser-Busch.’ I don’t get it.”
Rosie O’Donnell admonished the rocker’s reaction during a Tuesday interview with Mulvaney on her “Onward” podcast.
“Kid Rock had to take an assault weapon and shoot the boxes of beer, proving what?” O’Donnell asked. “Beer companies have been supportive of the LGBTQIA community for decades. This is not the first time.”
“Who do you think sponsors pride? Gay people, trans people, we drink beer too, man. Put down your gun, Kid Rock, it’s in bad taste. Especially after what happened at the school in Nashville.”
Mulvaney claims that she has not tried to be controversial, despite celebrating “365 days of girlhood” and trying to “normalize the bulge,” while wearing women’s clothes.
“I have tried to be the most uncontroversial person this past year and somehow it has made me controversial still,” Mulvaney noted.
“I think it comes back to the fact that these people, they don’t understand me and anything that I do or say then somehow gets taken out of context and is used against me.”
“It’s so sad because everything I try to put out is positive, it’s trying to connect with others that maybe don’t understand me, it’s to make people laugh or make a kid feel seen,” she said.
Mulvaney thinks that she’s “an easy target,” because she’s only recently transitioned.
‘I think going after a trans woman that’s been doing this for like 20 years is a lot more difficult,” the trans activist remarked.
“I think maybe they think that there’s some sort of chance with me … But what is their goal?
Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s husband Chasten chastised Bud Light boycotters on Monday.
“If you’re upset about a beer company supporting civil rights, you might want to start bottling your tears,” he tweeted. “LGBTQ people drink water, too. Gonna boycott that next?”
U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) joined the Bud Light protest, but ultimately failed miserably.
Crenshaw tried to jump on the bandwagon on Saturday, when he posted a video of himself walking to his outdoor refrigerator, ready to toss away all of his Bud Light.
When he opened the the fridge, he didn’t find any. “Alright, well I guess that was easy,” he remarked.
However, he didn’t realize that he had several cans of Karbach, which is owned by Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch.