Months after Bud Light’s financially devastating branding partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, nearly one-fifth — 19 percent — of beer drinkers are still avoiding the brand.
The development marks a slight improvement from a July survey conducted by Deutsche Bank which found 21 percent of beer consumers were uninterested in the brand.
One bright spot for the company, according to the report, is that just 3 percent of former Bud Light drinkers remain “very unlikely” to return to the brand, a significant improvement from 18 percent earlier this year.
“The proportion of former Bud Light drinkers who are say they are very unlikely to buy the brand in 3-6 months time has reduced from 18% to just 3%, a significant improvement,” Mitchell Collett, an analyst with Deutsche Bank, wrote. The development led the German financial institution to note that Anheuser-Busch showed “substantive signs of progress.”
In May, the once-beloved beer company lost its title as the nation’s most popular brew as mounting pressure in the face of consumer boycotts took a toll. Modelo Especial replaced the beleaguered Bud Light as the top-selling beer in May.
Bud Light has struggled to stay afloat as its collaboration with Mulvaney sent shockwaves across its traditionally blue-collar customer base. The ensuing backlash led to a collapse in sales triggering the British financial firm, HSBC, to downgrade Anheuser-Busch stock.
In April, Bud Light sales declined by 21.4 percent, while competitor brand Coors Light experienced a 10.9 percent sales bump. Beer purchases continued to slump in June, dropping by 27.9 percent compared to a year ago in the week ending June 24, data from NielsenIQ and Bump Williams Consulting revealed. The decline slightly improved from the 28.5 percent historic decrease the beer company suffered the prior week.
“The Fourth of July is the biggest beer holiday in terms of retail sales and an opportunity to move a lot of volume,” Dave Williams, vice president of Bump Williams Consulting, an alcohol beverage research company, told the New York Post. “And there has been no notable signs where the course has changed for Bud Light.”
“Our year is screwed,” one Anheuser-Busch distributor who doesn’t carry Modelo told the Wall Street Journal following the news.