Bud Light is trying again to win back some customers. The brand announced a new partnership meant to boost sales after a dismal year.
The brand is partnering with comedian Shane Gillis. Out is Dylan Mulvaney, the trans activist influencer who collaborated with Bud Light to promote the March Madness tournament in April 2023. That bone-headed marketing decision caused the company to lose billions of dollars when customers boycotted the brand. Can Gillis save Bud Light? We’ll see.
Bud Light and Gillis used their Instagram accounts to announce the news.
“Welcome to the team @shanemgillis, excited to be a part of your 2024 tour,” the beer brand posted.
“Excited to announce partnership with Bud Light #budlightpartner,” Gillis posted to his Instagram account.
Bud Light marketing director Alissa Heinerscheid lost her job because the decision to collaborate with Mulvaney showed a lack of knowledge about Bud Light drinkers. She did an interview where she talked about Bud Light as a kind of “fratty” brand, and “kind of out of touch humor.” The collab with Mulvaney backfired almost immediately. It turns out that everyday beer drinkers don’t appreciate being dragged into cultural battles like transgenderism. Bud Light sales plummeted. Workers lost their jobs. Yet, there was never a real apology from top management for such tone deaf behavior in marketing the beer.
The company has made some attempts to get the attention of its former customers. There have been some videos that show beer drinkers doing ordinary things like backyard cookouts and a video that tried to show a patriotic theme as it spoke about the company’s long history. The company has brought on people like Peyton Manning to do commercials with sports themes. It’s all to appeal to the every man.
It will be interesting to see if Shane Gillis brings customers back. He knows about cancel culture. He was hired by Saturday Night Live in 2019. That didn’t last long after old jokes he made on his podcast surfaced. He was quickly fired when the jokes were interpreted as racist.
At the time SNL released a statement about the decision to let Gillis go.
“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” SNL stated at the time. “We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.”
I’m left pondering if Bud Light just assumes that alleged racist humor is what its beer drinkers want. It would assume that Bud Light drinkers are racist. Were there no non-controversial people in the entertainment industry who are willing to be associated with Bud Light? Maybe not. Gillis recently was a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, and the two men discussed the Dylan Mulvaney disaster.
“It became a joke,” Gillis told Rogan. “That’s tough to overcome, marketing-wise. It’s tough to get people to order a Bud Light publicly. You’re gonna get made fun of.”
“There’s never been a brand that has been hit like this before,” Rogan added.
“There’s never been a brand that has been hit like this before.”
Joe Rogan, Shane Gillis, Mark Normand and Ari Shaffir debate the long term effects of the Bud Light boycott. pic.twitter.com/xxV7otgCAz
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) May 30, 2023
Will this move just be an excuse for the wokesters out there to relive the old jokes made by Gillis? Instead of a backlash by conservatives, Bud Light might receive backlash from the woke crowd. Like other comedians, Gillis has joked about transgender people.
Bud LIght has been slowly welcomed back into the lives of those who boycotted the brand. It has a huge deal with the UFC. Some celebrities have come out in favor of ending the boycott, like Kid Rock, who shot up some Bud Light beer cans in the early days of the boycott. Donald Trump, Jr. called for an end of the boycott last April.
Donald Trump Jr. calls for end to Bud Light boycott https://t.co/l9mteYuQjX pic.twitter.com/wgyusyCQRG
— New York Post (@nypost) April 15, 2023
Here’s the thing – I don’t think Bud Light executives really get it. They seem to be floundering around, throwing ideas on the wall to see what sticks. The company’s CEO said he would be taking a road trip across America to get to know people across the country. Did he learn anything? One thing he hasn’t learned is that Bud Light boycotters want an apology. A real apology, not a new video showing working class people sitting in their back yards enjoying a beer. A real apology would go a long way, if it isn’t too late by now.
Good for Gillis. Go get the money. But, I hope the brand is putting resources into helping those blue collar workers who lost their jobs during the financial downturn. Are they being compensated? It isn’t their fault that a woke thirty-something marketing executive hired a trans activist that denigrates women. That marketing decision had real life consequences for thousands of workers.
Gillis is a Bud Light drinker. Will more beer drinkers come back to Bud Light now? We’ll see what happens now.