Anheuser-Busch Inbev said Tuesday that revenue growth in most of its global regions was offset by a drop in North American sales, in a sign of continuing fallout from a promotion with a transgender influencer that cost it sales.
The world’s largest brewer and parent company of Bud Light said adjusted earnings for the latest quarter rose 4.1% to $5.4 billion on revenues that climbed 5% to $15.6 billion.
Revenue in the United States for the July-September period, however, tumbled 13.5%. AB InBev, based in Leuven, Belgium, noted that sales to retailers were down “primarily due to the volume decline of Bud Light.”
Bud Light sales plunged amid a conservative backlash after the brand sent a commemorative can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in early April.
No…
Rightwingers started making a bunch of noise. And AB immediately caved to them. Making the vast majority of everyone else not want to buy their products either.
If they stayed on course the drop probably wouldn’t happen. Instead they managed to piss of the majority of Americans on both sides.
I wonder what percentage of people who would be put off by Budweiser caving to bigots so quickly would actually regularly drink Budweiser in the first place?
Have you seen the way those hipsters guzzle PBR? Do you really think it tastes any better than Budweiser? Image is EVERYTHING when you’re selling cheap beer. Budweiser could have cemented its place as a progressive all-inclusive all-american beer. Instead they gave in to the bullies, an act that no bully can respect.
PBR has a very distinct flavor. Its not great but its fine.
The best thing about a PBR is, if you don’t finish it… oh well
It goes really well with tortoise shell glasses and a beard. 🙄
Selling hipsters on a basically dead beer like PBR would be easier than getting them to drink the most mainstream of beers.
I don’t think hipsters have been into pbr for like ten years, but it’s possible I’ve just aged out of hipster circles.
Hipsters aren’t really A Thing any more. Sure there are people who still act like that about stuff, but I don’t really see anyone making it their whole personality any more. It’s gone back to individual niches.
It’s more of “if you want a dirt cheap beer and theoretically could be a hipster”. Like I drink it when I’m looking for something cheaper than a local ale/lager and not liquor. It’s ok. Light beer is rarely worth it to me though. It’s too flavorless, if I want something with that few calories I just get whiskey
We’re all about Pliny out here. I don’t know if I can afford to be a hipster anymore tho
PBR is absolutely more tolerable than bud light. It’s a hair better than bud heavy but only because I’m not a big fan of rice adjuncts. I promise you if you put bud light and PBR in blind taste tests the vast majority will tell you they are different. I guarantee you I could tell you which is which 100% of the time. Bud heavy… I feel confident I could tell the difference but it would definitely be closer.
That’s irrelevant and a straw-man argument anyway. I never said or believed that the two beers were indistinguishable. They’re both cheap and awful in their own unique ways, but they are both on the same level of quality TO MYSELF and probably many others. I can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in a blind taste test also, but that doesn’t mean I think one is better than the other.
Whew lad I was just having a fun talk about beer. I wasn’t challenging your authority or saying you can’t have opinions or whatever.
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The people who drink Budweiser and Bud Light are the people who buy cheap beer. Whether it’s at a bar or stocking up for a party, it’s like buying chips or pizza, you aren’t thinking too hard about it. Miller or Busch or PBR or Coors or Old Style or Michelob or any other roughly equivalent beer (half of which are also owned by AB) works just as well. Budweiser gave people a reason to think about their beer, and didn’t give anyone a reason to think positively about their beer. If you are looking at the available options, and one of them is associated with bigotry, you’re going to pick anything else.
Bud Light sells at gay bars the same as any other beer lol
Gay people are just normal people.
Yeah I think a lot of people think of us as more urbane and refined, and yes, I do definitely feel that our community and culture encourages that. But also I’ve met plenty of dudebro gay guys that would reach for a bud same as their friends. Hell I’ve met nonbinary folks who are as hick as it gets.
A vanishingly small percentage. The kind of people that care about inclusivity and LGBTQ+ rights aren’t the kind of people that drink Budweiser. Their core demographic skews very heavily to the dude bro side of things. They pissed off a significant chunk of their existing customers, and then by immediately backtracking lost any potential new customers they might have picked up. They basically made the worst possible set of decisions they could have.
The kind of people that care about inclusivity and LGBTQ+ rights aren’t the kind of people that drink Budweiser
It’s so weird that people actually think this is true.
I can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of people I know who drink Bud or Bud Light, and every last one of them is deeply conservative.
So?
How many college aged kids do you know?
Why do you think there’s no gay people out there that just want to chug cheap beer? Like, you’re low key being really bigoted and just stomping your feet when people are trying to explain why you’re wrong…
People’s sexuality has zero to do with what kind of alcohol they prefer… that shouldn’t need to be explained in 2023, but here we are.
How am I being bigoted?
As for the other question, at this point I think I know 2 people in college. It’s been a while since I’ve been out of college myself so I’m mostly having to go by my memory from back then. The two people I know in college don’t drink beer, and back when I was in college nobody I knew drank beer either, we all pretty much exclusively drank rum or vodka, or occasionally like a hard cider or something. My understanding is that beer consumption among millennials and younger generations is down pretty much across the board as is alcohol consumption in general (although less so than beer specifically).
This is less a question of alcohol in general though than it is one of brand perception. Bud has always sold itself as the 'murica beer, just like Fosters always sold itself as what people that have never been to Australia think is an Australian beer. Marketing and brand perception is really the only thing that differentiates most of these beers, as really they’re all pretty much the same stuff in the can.
How am I being bigoted?
Because for some reason you think people who support LGBT rights can’t enjoy cheap shitty beer…
I’m not sure what you’re not getting here. It’s the same as saying they don’t watch sports, like fast cars, shooting guns, or any other stereotypically “straight thing”.
Does that make sense?
I live in LA and go out to bars in West Hollywood occasionally. Most people at gay bars order cocktails, since they are dancing and don’t want heavy stomachs; but the beer choices are typically Bud brands, and people order them. The liquor stores in West Hollywood sell Budweiser, as do the grocery stores. The restaurants there have Bud brands on tap or in bottles.
Gay people do drink Bud Light. Maybe not the same percentages or amounts as MAGA Bros, but they do drink it.
Oh well if you’ve got such hard-hitting science behind you I guess I just look silly.
I mean I’ve provided just as much data as you have. Your stance is “it’s weird people think this”, and my response is that’s because that’s what people experience. Obviously if everyone you know who drinks Bud is conservative, you’re going to associate those two. I’ve never seen anything to suggest that isn’t the case, and you’ve provided no evidence to counter that either.
Budweiser products have a level of market share (still, even today, after a fairly big hit) that defies political leanings. Their market share was hurt by both political reactions to this complete non-issue of a marketing idea.
The politicization of beer is dumb, as a general rule.
Gays and straights, rich and poor, people just drink beer they like (and, often, can afford to drink in bulk)
My anecdata is similar. The only people I know who drink budd/miller/any other cheap crap beers also happen to be trump voters
Yeah that’s the question. Like I’d’ve stopped buying their beer over them caving if I hadn’t stopped buying their beer over it tasting eerily similar to some nonalcoholic beers.
If you cave to conservative backlash and stop supporting me then I stop supporting you.
I generally won’t drink Bud, but I used to tolerate it at shows just to get something alcoholic that wouldn’t break the bank. As is, I’d rather spend more than have two shitty tastes in my mouth…
Worst part was they hung Dylan out to dry. She didn’t ask for the partnership, they wanted to use her for her demo. Then, when bigots started losing their minds, they threw her under the bus. They offered zero guidance or support of any kind. After unleashing the hate and vitriol of assholes across the country, silence. Fuck everyone involved at InBev.
This is gonna be in PR textbooks one day, if it isn’t already. It’s a shining example of what not to do in the face of a moral panic.
I’m almost certain the best move in the face of moral panic is to stay the course.
Acquiesce to the bigots and you piss off your supporters too.
Manipulator&Sons PR Advice for major corporations:
Step 1) (mostly applies to Americans) Hire a propaganda specialist to monitor current news propaganda cycles that will inform marketing on current minefields.
Step 2) Don’t step in political minefields created by said propagandists.
Step 3) Profit.
it’s a picture perfect case of how not to market towards your target audience. not anything to do with “moral panics”
Piss is the key word here.
Note that they still gained revenue. The idiots not buying Bud Light just bought another of the bajillion beers AB Inbev owns.
And not just gained revenue, but 5.4 god damn billion dollars. “Hurting” my ass. They can give me some of that so they can keep milking this bs
Hey, if they wanna give me some of that billions, I’ll let myself get dehydrated and give them my piss.
I mean, it tastes the same, probably.
Nah, you’d have to be pretty well hydrated to recreate Bud Light.
Reminds me of when the US was in some soccer related match against Belgium, and AB In-Bev decked their Budweiser cans out in American flags.
Idiots everywhere. ‘yeah gimme an America beer to support team USA!!’
…Those sales went to a Belgian owned conglomerate.
Nothing is more American than global trade and purchasing shit from our allies, nothing wrong with that
Revenue in the US was down 13%, as mentioned in the article.
A bunch of idiots switch to Modelo… also owned by AB
Everyone that got pissed off about that tried other stuff and found out it was actually better.
Also, a lot of dumbasses probably went to the store and bought a different product… made by the same company.
Hang out at a gas station in the south a lot…
Lot of dumbasses buying Budweiser hoping that Budlight goes bankrupt because of their decision to get something else.
Might as well be trying to bankrupt Coke by buying Diet Coke.
Haha came here thinking the same thing. I actually liked their endorsement for that trans person but I’d never switch to fuckin bud lite. Ew.
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I’m sure fuckn Bud Light is very popular with the kids…
Marketing beer to children?
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When you say dude, you’re referring to…?
They’re intentionally referring to the trans woman influencer in question as if they were not female.
Shocking and from someone with such a tasteful username as well
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they are not female. Female refers to sex. I think you mean to say “as if they were not a woman”, right?
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You could even say, they cancelled Bud Light.
Oh wait no, they don’t do that! /s
That’s the republicans bread and butter
“Stupid and Hateful.” I agree.
“Muh team no matter wut.”
Do you want a discussion or to hear your own beliefs repeated back to you as is usual fare in this subreddit
Go ahead, I can’t wait to listen to you regurgitate FOX talking points.
I despise fox news. I suppose the answer to my question was as I feared. Single minded American Polarity with no interest in discussion. How beneficial to the human race.
Downvote with no reply = I’m right and you don’t like it
A discussion about what? You could explain to everyone why you’d do something so stupid but does it really matter? It wouldn’t make it less stupid.
in this subreddit
“subreddit” 😂 go back there if you miss it so much
When you have browsed reddit for 12 years in nearly identical apps, it takes some time for habits to die off. That said, fuck reddit.
People should be boycotting bud light because it’s awful not because of their ad.
What I don’t get is all the people pointing out Bud Light doesn’t taste good like it’s a recent discover or new change…
Like, do you all really think people are out their drinking shitty light beer because they like the taste?
They’re drinking it because it’s cheap and they can drink a case a day by themselves.
Hell, back in college if someone showed up with Budweiser, they got shit for wasting money on “expensive” beer. Normally everyone just bought whatever was the cheapest option, because how it tasted was the absolute lowest priority when getting enough booze for 50-100 broke college kids to binge drink.
What’s funny is that you can spend less money on some cheap ass bottom shelf wine that has a higher alcohol content. You get drunk faster, for less money and you don’t have to drink as much if that’s your goal. You just won’t look cool being the kid showing up to the rager with bottles of Bare Foot or Yellow Tail.
You can’t use wine in a beer bong. Or, maybe better said, you shouldn’t. Nor can you do a keg stand with bottles of wine. Wine beer pong sucks, a lot, I’ve played it. I’d rather put whiskey in the cups.
While I agree with you in terms of efficiency, wine just doesn’t work for drinking games the same as beer.
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My mom drinks bud light because she can drink all day and still use power tools with relative safety.
Your mom might be everyone’s dad. Shit is real.
That sounds like who they were marketing to…
I didn’t understand that campaign… Bud Light has always been the wilfully shitty and boring beer that appeals to (and I’m trying to be diplomatic here… ) blue collar types or those that don’t really have a discerning palate.
Millennials and Zoomers by and large don’t drink that much beer. Gender neutral/accepting club kids don’t drink beer. If they’re drinking anything, it’s likely cocktails or white claw. In the odd event they went for beer it would be something quirky or higher quality than Bud fucking Light. Presumably Bud was trying to appeal to that crowd since their chief demographic is stagnant, but Bud Light was silly to not go after a group adjacent to their core audience but instead court a fickle segment of the population who doesn’t give half a fuck about what they’re selling and moreover is full on HATED by who already consumed their beer. Bud has decades of cultural weight about being a conservative, blue collar beer… that matters for better or worse
For the record: I’m glad a brand like Bud (who I have zero love for) made overtures to the trans community… even if it was crass commercialization. From a purely capitalist perspective, it made zero sense for a brand like Bud. What’s worse, due to Bud’s misstep, bigots now feel emboldened and other brands might make the decision to not be inclusive after watching this play out
Trans allies (and open minded folks in general) by and large moved on from tasteless American adjunct lagers a decade ago and drink completely different beer. Bud is a relic. Trying to give it a hurried makeover won’t suddenly make it cool. Jumping into the culture war fray and folding the instant bigots complained just fucked things up Bud’s appeal for anyone whose attention they had
I will say that the trans community where I am definitely are beer drinkers but overwhelmingly the vibe is locally produced stuff. I know at least two trans folk who run breweries. Maybe folk who conquer the lows of discontentment with one’s body and place in society to finally live as their most authentic self despite the cultural blowback are gunna be a little more aspirational in their self care than Bud Lite?
Just sayin…
Beer is the preferred alcoholic beverage of 69% of men aged 18 to 29, 65% of men aged 30 to 49, 52% of men aged 50 to 64, and 39% of men aged 65 and older
Millennials and Gen Z drink beer at higher rates than other generations
Trans allies (and open minded folks in general) by and large moved on from tasteless American adjunct lagers a decade ago and drink completely different beer. Bud is a relic.
This does not hold up, mathematically.
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InBev is anus and their generic beers are mostly horrible. People should have already been boycotting them long ago for being a soulless international conglomerate.
Chances are there is a local or regional brew that corresponds to whatever mass market swill they produce, and people should drink those small local brewery offerings instead.
No no, tasting like piss is not the issue here. They never once complained about drinking the worst made beer ever.
Clearly the issue was someone once gave 6 beers to someone they don’t like.
I mean, once that person posted on social media… well bigotry requires that they must shout about people “shoving this issues down my throat” and act like an asshole.
I mean that person who got 6 free beers posted a fucking picture about in the internet… can you believe that? From now on you gotta buy piss from someone else. I bet they’re not “woke” in South Africa…
/s
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It shines bad light on Budweis (České Budějovice), home of the best beer in the world (second only to another Czech town Plzeň/Pilsen)
Til it becomes popular enough for these leeches to buy it out…
for being a soulless international conglomerate.
I think this rhetoric would hit harder if the alternatives were willing to sacrifice profit to give us a better deal.
…So… it’s making billions instead of billions? My God…
Conservatism is a plague of oppression. If you are not with them, you are against them.
The disease of conservatism is long overdue for a cure. Do your part by teaching your children why it is inappropriate to keep relationships with conservatives
I go to school with some conservatives and it doesn’t seem like they’ll ever drink bud light so you may have a point.
- 🤓
That’s a very loose definition of the word “struggles”
Or “beer”.
Careful your transphobia is showing.
More like my hydrophobia.
5.4 billion in revenue last quarter. Oh they’re struggling so hard.
ITT: “Bud Light is bad”
So are all of the top-selling beers in the world, and especially in America (which is the subject of this article).
We get it. You’re into craft beer that costs $20/pint. I like them on occasion myself. But when I want to get drunk on beer cheaply, I’m not going to my local brewery. I’m not even going to Great Lakes or Same Adams. I’m going for a cheap, light, mass-produced pilsner. PBR, Coors, Miller Lite, Bud Light, Youngling, etc. They’re all the same cheap swill.
It’s the same with everything. The average person who isn’t an enthusiast consumes tons of mediocre junk. Taylor Swift is probably a good analog for music: I don’t see a lot of academic musicians analyzing the new music theory she’s implementing, or literary analysts dissecting her lyrics. Marvel Movies are getting famous for being pretty much the same heroes journey with rushed CGI every 6 months or so. Tons of people still watch shows like Friends, the Office, and Seinfeld. McDonald still sells billions of burgers in spite of the existence of high-end restaurants.
And that’s okay. Not everything. You consume needs to be some ultra-expensive artisanal elitist product.
As for Bud Light in particular, this is a a great example of a bad PR team. Either stick to your guns or don’t enter the fight in the first place. The fact that they’ve backed down and caved to transphobes means they’re much lower on my list now.
Excellent take, but in defense of the AB PR team, I don’t think they were expecting so much backlash from giving a 6 pack of beer to a trans person. I think it was just a small promotion they were doing and they were not anticipating this blowing up into something big. Right wing Twitter caught wind of it and made it a much bigger deal than it was.
They did something very triggering to a group of people that are extremely easily triggered. To a normal person it seems like no big deal on the surface. From a business stand point, it makes zero sense to promote your product to people who don’t like it, while triggering a huge chunk of your faithful patrons.
Might be called the Butterfly effect, idk, but the token move definitely brewed up a blizzard of conservative snowflakes.
But if you’re trying to get drunk as fast as you can for as cheap as possible without any regard for taste, there are are products out there that have higher alcohol content and cost less than all of those products you named. Wouldn’t that be a more efficient means to an end?
Yeah it really was a shit thing to back down on it. The right won’t buy their beer anymore because Busch tried to support trans people
But now the left won’t buy it because they lack conviction to stick to their word.
As you said, they shouldn’t have entered the arena, or stuck to their imagery now that they’re associated with it (for better or worse). Now they’re paying the price of being a bunch of wet-noodles.
Heineken gets a lot of flak (at least in France) but imo it’s the best beer in the “almost too diluted to pass as actual beer” category
heineken light is also impressively satisfying for a lower calorie beer, gotta say
So, I hear you enjoy golden showers
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Craft beer is 20$ in the US? Wtf?
No. I mean, yeah, some beer somewhere is probably $20/pt. But most of the ones I see at the store are like $12-14 for a four-pack.
I can pick up a really decent locally made ale/stout/ipa/whatever for like $15 per six-pack, I’m sure I could spend more but that’s the beer I prefer.
$20/pt would have to be a nicer restaurant or (more likely) a concert venue or sports stadium, skies the limit there lol.
You can find bottles for over $100 of you look for them.
I’ll admit I’m exaggerating a bit for effect here. Wine, Whisk(e)y, pretty much every other alcohol is the same. It also depends on if you get it at some fancy restaurant or a case at a wholesaler.
Southern Tier PumKing is a seasonal Halloween brew that’s pretty expensive. I see my local spot is advertising it for $16 for 4 12oz bottles. $16 will also get you 12 12oz bottles of Miller Lite, so 3x the volume for the same price. Southern Tier a moderately-sized brewery: not one of the big ones, but not a local microbrewery either. I can also see there is a listing for Weldwerks Old Rio Medianoche for $428.99 for 12 16oz bottles.
So Miller Lite is $0.11 per oz, PumKing is $0.33 per oz, and $2.23 per oz for the super expensive stuff.
I’m a Belgian brewer myself. Our country is filled to the brim with breweries, but you’ll have to try hard to find beer at those prices.
I’ve been to American craft breweries several times. They’re masters at the commercial aspect, but the beer tends to be lacking to what we’re used to over here.
Is there anything special about these beers besides the obviously inflated prices? Sounds like a common marketing trick to make them more exclusive than they are.
Beer isn’t wine, whiskey or other alcohols. Beer is a lot more “short term” because of the limited alcohol strength.
Many distilled drinks, and wine can evolve their taste over decades. That’s why their prices can go up exponentially relative to age.
This isn’t the case for beer, as their best before date is fairly limited.
I find it funny how every single European brewer thinks that their country is the only one that knows how to brew beer properly. Or anything else. In America, there’s such an incredible diversity that there is not much value in reducing the whole country to such generalizations.
Interestingly, the 5th most expensive beer in history was from Belgium. The De Cam & 3 Fonteinen Millennium Geuze. So no, Belgium isn’t immune to ridiculously priced beer.
The point I was making is that there is a wide range of price points available for beer (like most products). I started by defending the existence of the low-end, cheap beer. Once you get to a certain point, you’re paying for a weird gimmick or status symbol more than the quality. This isn’t some weird American quirk, but a global phenomenon.
I would argue it is an American quirk. Exceptions exist in other countries, but in the US it seems “normal” is the marketing term everyone avoids. A side effect of the rampant capitalism there.
Lol capitalism is ramlanr across the globe to various degrees.
Is Porsche American? What about Ferrari? Lamborghini?
Or we can look at something else like cheese. The most expensive cheese in the word is Pule, from the Balkans, ranging from $600-$1300/lb. The second is Moose cheese (Swedish, $500/lb), the third is White Stilton (British, $400/lb).
Kobe beef starts at $100/lb for low-grade stuff and goes up from there.
The most expensive champagne was “2013 Taste of Diamonds” and sold for over $2,000,000/bottle. It is, of course, French.
Does anyone in Europe, or anywhere else in the world, embrace “normal” as a marketing term? One of the cores of marketing is to differentiate a product from competition, so that only becomes an option if “normal” is itself abnormal. An example of that would be noname, and they are Canadian. Aside from that, there are certainly brands in America that Americans would describe as “normal”, but that is derived from the lack of marketing rather than a converted effort to use that term.
Once again it seems like you just learned what you think you know about America from reading some news headlines, and you’re generalizing that “Europe good, America bad, no where else exists”
I think you’ll find that a lot of the pricing of alcohol in the US is due to taxes added at multiple levels (federal, state, local). We love vice taxes over here.
I had similar problems with Target when they just immediately decided to just cave
I think it’s more related to the total lack of spine on their part, and their willingness to sell out one market in order to appease another.
They could have had a market for life. Just ask Subaru.
Idk… It’s not a good product. I don’t think they were ever going to gain market share outside their “traditional” market.
If they wanted to address that market, they should have created a new quality product and target that instead of messing with their established base.
I’m not saying this because I agree with what has happened, but just speaking objectively given the fact that a lot of the macro beer mkt is a bunch of backwards ass morons.
Their beer is awful. Maybe that’s the reason
I mean, I don’t drink it, but to say. It’s awful isn’t accurate. It’s just not for you. As nature cat said, “don’t yuck someone else’s yum”
As an amateur home brewer I’ve always been amazed by the consistency of these large lager producers. I brewed a couple lagers and they were neither good nor consistent.
“Have you ever tried to set up your own internet service provider? It’s actually really difficult and we should be thanking Comcast for all the hard work they do.”
Did the person ever say you should thank Budweiser for what they do? Did they ever say you should like Budweiser? Your extremely stretched analogy is terrible.
What they did praise was Budweiser’s consistency. Does Comcast have good consistency? No. What they did say was it’s very difficult to achieve that consistency, and that is an impressive thing to do. They never said you should like the product, nor did they say they like the product. But clearly a lot of people do like the product, unlike Comcast.
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Yes, you didn’t say that, but you implied it with your analogy. If you didn’t think that the person was saying those things, then what point were you making with your analogy? Your analogy was Bud = Comcast and How Much I Like Bud’s Beer = How Much I Like Comcast’s Service… but the person never said they like Bud’s Beer and never said you should. So if you don’t think the person was saying those things, then what point WERE you trying to make?
The article’s talking about a drop in beer sales this year. Did its awfulness increase significantly in that period?
Wouldn’t surprise me
Honestly their Belgian beers (Leffe and Hoegaarden) are not bad for commercial beers. Probably not as good as local low volume brewery, but definitely better than Bud/Corona
I’m only familiar with the “controversy” from the headlines, but I don’t quite understand what pissed off the conservatives so much. Budweiser just sent this person a custom-branded 6-pack or something, right?
Every company sells their product to people from all walks of life, it’s just not always publicized. The fact that they choose to rage against Budweiser of all brands is just ridiculous to me. Now if they were complaining about the quality of the beer, that I might understand.
Rightwing influencers need content just like every other influencer. They found out about the promotion and then went to work making the videos that would drive their audiences absolutely insane over this nonsense.
To them, simply recognizing a trans person as their name or gender they present as is enough to mean that you want to groom children. So because Busch didn’t call Dylan a “he” or whatever her dead name was, suddenly Busch is supporting the indefinite rape of children. Their minds only go to the absolute extremes, and the only way to make them back down from their ingrained views is to be a family member or friend who knows them personally.
