AB InBev has spent more than a year trying to revive Bud Light, but it’s still getting overshadowed by other brands.
Photographer: Yuvraj Khanna/Bloomberg
Bud Light’s Multi-Million Dollar Campaign to Overcome MAGA Backlash Fizzles
America’s former No. 1 beer has been losing ground since conservative boycotts last year. Now AB InBev is betting big on another light beer.
Bud Light — a brand built on bro-y fun — was made for joints like the Green Rock Tap and Grill in Hoboken, New Jersey. It’s a rowdy sports bar with $1 wing nights that in 2022 sold $250,000 of what was then America’s best-selling beer.
But its Bud Light business has collapsed — tallying just $37,000 so far this year — in a microcosm of how the brand, owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, has struggled since April 2023. That’s when an influencer who is transgender promoted it online and sparked a conservative backlash — one that included Kid Rock in a MAGA hat shooting up cases of it and Ted Cruz calling for an investigation.