AB InBev launches limited-edition snow-brewed Bud Light. Is this an attempt to recover from the unfortunate collaboration with Mulvaney?
There are those who transform water into wine and those who make it beer with the neve. This is the latest idea AB InBev, global alcohol giant, which in the last few hours has launched a beer produced with snow taken from the Highmark Stadium in New York.
The label reads “Bud Light Blizzard Brew“, and it is a limited edition product designed for fans of the NFL, the largest American football league in the world. Sports attempt to realign the Bud Light brand, once a favorite of the vast American public, with the macho universe?
Bud Light, from transgender activist to rugby
In April 2023, Bud Light entered into a partnership with the activist transgender Dylan Mulvaney. The consequences were rough, rapid and long-lived: boycott on a national scale, a stock market crash, the rise of fierce competitors, entire lots unsold or ignored (even when those lots were offered for free), the advancing shadow of high-profile beheadings and the dismissal of hundreds of workers. A year later, it was estimated that Mulvaney’s choice cost AB InBev – Bud Light’s parent company – over a billion dollars.
The case can be taken as an example of how do not lead a campaign of marketing. In other words: when your target is homophobic, remaking your image only serves to prevent sales. Blizzard Brew, we were saying, was born as part of a new partnership with i Buffalo Bills, team active in the NFL. U-turn.
The snow used in the beer was collected during the first snowfall at Highmark Stadium earlier this season. It was then transported to the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Baldwinsville, New York; and was subsequently integrated into the production process. The communication speaks directly to fan: the beer “celebrates the efforts made by the fans of the Bills for one of the NFL’s greatest traditions.”
Edition limited and tailor-made communication, therefore. Distribution – as is clear – will instead be concentrated at a series of selected retailers in the Buffalo area and in other fan meeting points. As mentioned, to recover tap a kidney stroke not indifferent.
In the second half of 2024 AB InBev has lost revenue by 0.6% in the United States, with sales contractions of 2.7% for wholesalers and 4.1% for retail stores (red signs made stronger by the aforementioned Bud Light boycott). Added to this is data from a recent report by Beer Marketers, which highlighted how Americans are drinking the lowest amount of beer since the 1990s. Just contact tribalismo of the fans to re-establish the course?
