Anheuser-Busch Has Been Woke Longer Than You Think

When Pride parades and other LGBT events started to gain steam in the 1990s, “Bud Light was the brand,” a 35-year veteran of Anheuser-Busch told National Review.

To many consumers of Bud Light, the beer’s recent creative collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, a male who became an overnight woke sensation for his viral “Days of Girlhood” TikTok videos, came out of left field.

But a review of the company’s marketing efforts from over 30 years ago suggests the partnership is just the latest episode in a long-running inclusivity-focused ad strategy.

With over 100 beverage brands, AB has tapped into markets across many countries and demographics. A traditionally conservative firm founded by German Americans, AB was stewarded by multiple consecutive generations of Busch descendants until 2008, when it was acquired by Brazilian-based international brewer Inbev, adding dozens of new brands from around the world to its repertoire.

That takeover accelerated an internal transformation that was “much more progressive” and began decades earlier, said the AB veteran, who worked in brand management across many sectors of the business.

“The Busches would have never done this,” he said of the Mulvaney move.

In the mid 1990s, he said, Bud Light hired an “alternative lifestyle” brand manager.

“His job was to go around the country and interact with LGBT groups and provide materials for them. It was very specific tactics. If a bar wanted a rainbow neon sign, he was the guy to get it,” he said.

When he left years ago, the position was preserved. “It’s not like it was a flash in the pan, it was there for 20 years,” he said.

In 1993, a Bud Light TV commercial titled “Ladies Night” featured four men dressed in drag visiting a bar and ordering the beer. Two years later, Bud Light launched a campaign promoting acceptance of the LGBT community that stated, “Labels belong on beer not on people.” Bud Light teamed up with GLAAD, an organization fighting gay, lesbian, and transgender defamation in 1998. Their relationship is still going strong today.

“Bud Light has long been a staunch supporter of the LGBT community,” Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD president and CEO, said in 2016 after Bud Light debuted an ad including a same-sex wedding. “This spot is the latest in a long line of inclusive advertising that will help increase understanding and accelerate LGBT acceptance. GLAAD has been honored to partner with Bud Light for 18 years.”

In 2019, Bud Light unveiled a GLAAD-crossover rainbow aluminum bottle to celebrate World Pride. Bud Light pledged to donate $1 to the nonprofit for every case sold in June, which is Pride Month.

“Bud Light has been a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community since the ’80s and we are excited to continue our long-standing partnership with GLAAD by collaborating with them on this new commemorative bottle that celebrates the LGBTQ+ community and everything GLAAD does to support it,” Andy Goeler, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, said at the time.

The multinational corporation also broke ground on LGBT pandering to youth as recently as a few years ago.

Juan Alonso Torres-Benavides, a marketing director for AB who leads the LGBTQ+ employee resource group for the middle America division, said in a video interview from March 2022 that his team works on a Colombia-based product called Pony Malta, a nonalcoholic malt energy beverage that’s marketed to kids and teenagers.

In July 2020, the brand promoted “Pridelists,” consisting of six colored playlists, to cross-share between Spotify and Instagram. Users were encouraged to share a song from each color Spotify playlist on their Instagram story to symbolize the Pride flag. On the anniversary of the Stonewall riots during Pride month, thousands of Instagram accounts across Latin America shared their rainbow posts, according to Little Black Book.

Ahead of International Pride Day in 2021, Pony Malta launched a “Ride the Pride” campaign to raise awareness for bullying “due to sexual orientation, identity or gender expression” in the sport of skateboarding, which it claimed was particularly prone to LGBT-targeted harassment.

“In Colombia, gender identity or expression is the second-most frequent cause for a boy, girl, or teenager to be a victim of bullying; a disturbing figure amidst the fight for diversity,” Torres told the publication. “At Pony Malta, we want to support the members of the LGBTQ+ community and ensure they feel represented.”

Flash forward to May 2022, when Ambev, a Brazilian brewing company that merged into AB, hired a specialized lawyer to help its transgender-identifying employees change their legal names in official documents as part of its “Call Me by My Name” initiative. Trans staff receive legal as well as financial support for the process.

Issabela Reis, Ambev’s People and Management Analyst who appears to identify as transgender, said: “This is a very humanitarian issue of the trans body, of seeing the possibility of our existence. I felt human.”

Also in May 2022, Bud Light joined forces with the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), an organization that advocates for LGBT-owned businesses.

“When we first brought Bud Light into the market in 1982, we set out to introduce a beer that would not only disrupt the beer category but was brewed for everyone,” said Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light Blue. “We’re excited to continue supporting the LGBTQ+ community — this year in the form of a new partnership with the NGLCC which will help promote LGBTQ+ businesses across the country that bring people together.”

Heinerscheid has been in the hot seat since media outlets unearthed an old podcast episode in which she said she was charged with reinventing Bud Light away from its “fratty” roots and “out of touch” humor.

The former AB professional said that the Mulvaney scandal might not have materialized if Heinerscheid had not doubled down on LGBT inclusivity and demeaned the core customers.

“They probably would have been okay. It would have been a little blip,” he said. “But when Alissa said, ‘Those frat boy images, and that old marketing to middle-aged guys who play softball, we’re doing away with that. We’re going after the new market, the trans people.’ That is what pissed people off. To offend the guys who play darts who are 35 to 55 years old and make up a majority of that market share that Bud Light has, that was a problem.”

Heinerscheid also opined that Bud Light has long been a brand in decline because it fails to attract young drinkers. But in so doing, her approach has alienated the customer base, he said.

It’s becoming common for large corporations to shed their roots to embrace so-called bold, experimental ideas to remain relevant. But that strategy imploded in the case of Bud Light, the longtime marketing leader said.

“When Inbev took over, their philosophy was ‘We don’t want all that old institutional knowledge that you people have had for 40 years. We’re going to take a 25-year-old who worked for Johnson and Johnson and we’re going to promote them above you because they have new ideas,” he said. “This is a case where someone with new ideas sort of . . . stepped in it.”

Boycotts have erupted in response to the provocative Mulvaney bathtub bit and Heinerscheid’s comments. But the retiree said voting with your feet could backfire.

Since it was absorbed by Inbev, AB has become an empire, with so many brands that it’s difficult to avoid.

“People are like, ‘I’m going to stop drinking Bud Light and start drinking Corona.’ Well, guess what? We own Corona,” he said.

Since the Mulvaney fiasco, AB has shed billions in market cap. But it’s not the C-suite executives who will end up bearing the brunt of those losses.

“The guy that’s getting hurt is the guy that’s driving a Bud Light truck. A part of their compensation is how many cases they’re able to sell to a wholesaler,” the AB veteran said. “Three weeks ago, they were selling 150 cases to a big grocery store. This week, if they’re selling 30 cases, they’re lucky.”