Anheuser-Busch has watched Bud Light sales drop by nearly 30% as the beer has fallen from being the top brand in America to No. 14.
That puts Bud Light behind new top seller Modelo, as well as both Miller Lite and Miller Genuine Draft (TAP) -) (TAP.A) -).
This rather sad drop occurred after Kid Rock drew attention to a promotion between the Anheuser-Busch (BUD) -) brand and the transgender social influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
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These weren't television commercials or the company making Mulvaney the face of Bud Light. Instead, the company sent the influencer cans with her face on them and paid Mulvaney to post about the beer on her social-media channels.
It was a small promotion designed to extend Bud Light's brand into the LGBTQ+ community. The deal likely would have gone unnoticed if Rock had not posted a video of himself shooting up cases of the beer.
That post led to a national boycott and many of the brand's core customers opting to say they will never drink Bud Light again. That's something the company should have seen coming, according to rap legend Ice Cube, speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Image source: Getty Images.
Ice Cube Blames Budweiser
Ice Cube, a member of the legendary rap band NWA, who now appears mostly in family-friendly movies, says the beer company is at fault for not predicting that its fans would react this way.
"Who controls Bud Light? That’s the question. Why would they make a dumb decision like that?" the rapper asked on the podcast, Fox News reported. "Are they trying to ruin Bud Light? And why would they want to ruin Bud Light? Are they trying to take down some of our most iconic American brands?"
In retrospect, the reaction of Bud Light drinkers validates Ice Cube's opinion. But could the company truly have predicted that its customers would react with such anger to a transgender person being paid to promote the beer to her followers?
Rogan agrees that Anheuser-Busch should have expected this.
"People are sick of this shit. They’re sick of social things like that, that are controversial getting stuffed in your face, where you have to accept. People are like, ‘I don’t want to accept it,'" Rogan said.
Ice Cube also made clear that people don't want politics mixed into their drinks.
"Politics really shouldn’t be in someone’s beer mug," he added.
Rogan then went on to cite a popular right-wing trope -- the idea that transgender people are somehow misguided or mentally ill and that Mulvaney seeking the spotlight is somehow different from his own efforts to reach an audience.
"They don’t know any real people. They don’t know regular people," Rogan said.
"They have no idea that if you take a brand [like] Bud Light which is known for blue-collar drinking people that like to fucking watch football and drink Bud Light, then all of a sudden you have this mentally ill person who’s just an attention whore," Rogan said, referring to Mulvaney.
Rogan once hosted the show "Fear Factor," a long-running series where people regularly ate bugs and do other intentionally gross things in order to win cash prizes.
