A former executive of Bud Light’s parent company has criticized the current CEO for essentially prompting a customer boycott that led to factory closures in multiple states, all through an apparent marketing misstep.
Anson Frericks, a former president of Anheuser-Busch, recently suggested that the response from the company following the controversial partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney was botched.
“This chasm that we’re seeing between Bud Light and its consumers is only going to intensify because every time you come out with one of these weak statements of these just platitudes. … That’s not addressing the problem,” he told Fox Business.
“And until you address the problem, I don’t see consumers coming back and coming back to this brand,” he continued. “We’re in the fourth month of this right now. … This is something that should have been addressed three or four months ago.”
He went on to reference the recent layoffs at two glass-production plants that had to shutter — one in Louisiana and another in North Carolina — allegedly because of the steep drop in demand for Bud Light.
“Six-hundred workers at one of the Anheuser suppliers were just laid off. Unfortunately, there’s going to be more workers that can be laid off if we can’t find a CEO who is going to successfully, and confidently … address this situation,” he concluded.
An internal memo reportedly blamed the shutdown on the “slow sales with Anheuser Inbev,” per WRAL News. A machine repair mechanic at one of the plants, David Williams, said, “Because of Budweiser no longer selling the bottles, they no longer needed our product.”
Bud Light sales had crashed 31.3% year over year through the week ending on June 24, and Anheuser-Busch has watched its market cap fall around $27 billion since boycotts began.
The original boycott began after a marketing initiative with Dylan Mulvaney, a biological man who identifies as a woman. However, in the ensuing aftermath, company executives attempted to distance themselves from the marketing partnership with Mulvaney, which prompted LGBTQ bars to join the boycott.
Mulvaney recently joined in the criticism of Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch.
“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want,” Mulvaney said, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.