The Dylan Mulvaney/Bud Light Collaboration was a Minor Promotion with Massive Consequences
Judging by the backlash that it received, I naturally assumed that if right wingers were apoplectic about Bud Light’s relationship with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney it must be because the purveyors of poor quality domestic beer had gotten into bed with her in a big way.
I assumed that Bud Light shipped life-sized cardboard cut-outs of Mulvaney chugging domestic beer to every liquor store, proudly put her in commercial after commercial and basically did everything in their power to link Mulvaney to their brand in the public mind.
So I was surprised to learn that Bud Light’s relationship with Mulvaney consists largely of the beer giant sending Mulvaney some cans with her face on it and Mulvaney promoting a March Madness promotion via an Instagram video.
That was all it took, however, for the dispiritingly vast percentage of the world that hates trans people to decide that Bud Light had personally sent Dylan Mulvaney to all of their children’s schools to get them drunk and trick them into being trans.
That’s a major concern for a lot of parents, bizarrely enough: that they’ll send their innocent, asexual, ferociously cisgender babies to kindergarten and an enraged, blue-haired America-hater will turn their child gay or trans. They’ll send little Timmy to first grade to learn basic arithmetic and he’ll come home after the first day proudly declaring himself non-binary.
Bud Light wanted to simultaneously appeal to the LGTBQ community and backwards-thinking hate mongers who think that being trans is a mental illness that leads suggestible souls to mutilate their genitalia.
They did not realize that that was impossible. Bud Light wanted to pander to the trans community without losing people who hate the trans community.
It did not take long for Anheiser-Busch, a capitalist corporation that sells a product that destroys the lives of millions of Americans, to distance itself from Mulvaney.
They downplayed their relationship with Mulvaney, dismissing her as one of hundreds of influencers they work with an ongoing basis as part of their ongoing mission to sell beer.
They walked back their very modest support by reassuring bigots, "We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.”
Shortly afterwards it was announce that the beer giant’s vice president of marketing and her boss would be taking leaves of absence. Bud Light once again tried to please everyone without pleasing anyone.
They were not so subtly sending a message to Conservatives that working with Mulvaney was a mistake that it deeply regrets without going so far as to officially apologize or fire the executives ostensibly responsible for the decision.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. The damage was done. Sales for Bud Light plunged in the month following Mulvaney’s video anywhere from eleven to twenty-six percent.
Jackasses like Kid Rock called for a boycott and, in what can only be deemed a droll exercise in understatement, shot a bunch of Bud Light cans in retaliation for the corporation acknowledging that trans people exist.
A terrified Bud Light vowed to triple its advertising budget in the months ahead to offset the loss in sales.
It doesn’t matter. To the Kid Rocks of the world Bud Light is not a corporation that made a one-time decision to modestly support a trans woman that they obviously regret.
No, to people like him it’s not important that Bud Light backtracked quickly and intensely. All that matters is that they’re associated, in even a minor way, with someone that they despise because of who she is and how she chooses to live her life.
It took Bud Light very little time to get out of the Dylan Mulvaney business and prostrate itself before the prejudices and hatreds of the loudly transphobic. Yet I suspect that Bud Light will be associated in the public imagination with Dylan Mulvaney specifically and the LGTBQ community in general for decades.
Twenty fucking years from now some goober at a bar in rural Wisconsin will be afraid to order a Bud Light because his buddies will make fun of him for drinking a gay beer or a beer that’s trans.
Bud Light took a chance. It had a lot of negative immediate consequences but I fear that the real damage will be long-term.
At this point Bud Light might as well stamp, “We’re not gay, honestly! We just want to sell beer! We have no politics or ethics at all! We just want to sell beer! Please buy our beer!” on all of its cans.
These people will not forgive and will not forget despite there being very little to either forgive or forget about a little promotion that blew up in a big way.
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