American consumers are still furious over Bud Light’s recent controversy, choosing to reject the beer brand this Independence Day weekend.
Some Kid Rock fans told Fox News on Saturday that they will drink “anything but Bud Light” as they celebrate the Fourth of July holiday.
“What beer are we drinking on the Fourth of July? Um, I don’t know, anything but Bud Light,” one man, Rich, said. “Maybe Heineken Light.”
FOX Business correspondent Jackie DeAngelis warned that until companies learn that “politics and business don’t mix,” their bottom lines will continue to be impacted by those decisions to speak out.
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“The American consumer represents two-thirds of the U.S. economy, so there is a lot of power to that purse, and in the case of Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light, you can see the consumer has been speaking out,” DeAngelis said during “Hannity” Monday. “Not only are sales down, we can track that to the tune of roughly 30%, but market cap for the stock is down $20 billion. If that doesn’t speak volumes, I don’t know what would.”
“Now you’re seeing some of the folks at the bottlers that work for Bud Light, they’re being laid off to the tune of 600 and some odd people. Do you think those employees were part of this messaging? But they’re going to have to suffer as a result of the backlash from it,” she continued.
“If we’ve learned anything from Anheuser-Busch, from Target, from Larry Fink at BlackRock, it’s that politics and business don’t mix, and until corporations start to understand that, they’re going to feel the pinch from it.”
The beer company has endured sinking sales since it launched an ad with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney back in April to celebrate her “365 Days of Girlhood.” The advertisement sparked outrage nationwide as boycotts nationwide took effect.
Bud Light sales were down 24.4% compared to a year ago for the week ending June 3, Nielsen data provided to FOX Business by Bump Williams Consulting showed. Modelo Especial passed Bud Light as the number one selling beer brand on a dollar basis for the four-week and single-week period ending June 3.
A case of Bud Light is now reportedly selling for less than the cost of water in some places as retailers feel the financial burden of the consumer backlash.
Andy Wagner, the manager and 18-year veteran of Glenn Miller’s Beer & Soda Warehouse in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania told the New York Times that a 30-pack of Miller Lite was selling for $24.99, while a 30-pack of Bud Light was priced at $8.99 after a rebate.
The company released a new ad featuring Super Bowl champion Travice Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.
The ad titled, “Backyard Grunts with Travis Kelce,” appears to be aimed at Bud Light’s alienated male drinkers but most of the video’s comments lambasted the brand for the latest attempt to save face.
“Man Bud Light is going for the death blow at this point,” one commenter wrote. “This is what they think of their client base, stupid grunting cavemen.”
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OutKick host Tomi Lahren said the “hemorrhaging is not going to stop” and patriotic ads are not going to turn things around.
“They finally struck a chord, and I think getting to the core of this… a lot of people forget why this is happening,” Lahren said during “Fox & Friends First” Tuesday. “It’s not just because you had a can with a trans influencer on it. It’s because you had a trans influencer endorsing your product that markets to teenage girls. This trans influencer pretends to be a teenage girl.”
“So I think we need to get back to why Americans are so upset with this. It goes to the core of what this message was sent out by Bud Light, and Bud Light has yet to really acknowledge what they did.”
Fox News’ Teny Sahakian and Kendall Tietz contributed to this report.
