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Bud Light, made by Anheuser-Busch, sits on a store shelf in Miami on July 27, 2023.Photo by Joe Raedle /Getty Images
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The owners of beleaguered beer brand Bud Light have “lost trust” with their customers, and a Super Bowl ad won’t fix the mess, says a former company executive.
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Anson Frericks, who was president of sales and distribution at Anheuser-Busch from 2011 to 2022, told Neil Cavuto of Fox Business on Monday that the expensive football commercial won’t win back fans of the beer.
“They haven’t done a good job of climbing out of this ditch at all,” Frericks said on Cavuto: Coast to Coast. “You still have sales that are down 30% week over week, and that’s despite them last summer spending three times their planned marketing budget on Bud Light.”
In April 2023, Bud Light faced conservative backlash for a social media promotion involving transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Early in the new year, the company is still suffering from lower sales of the beer. For the week ending Jan. 20, sales are down 30% year-over-year, according to an analysis of NielsenIQ data by Bump Williams Consulting.
“The biggest problem is that they’ve lost trust with their customers and they still haven’t gone out and personally asked for their customers to come back to them,” Frericks said. “And until they restore that trust, I don’t think this brand is going to turn around and get back to growth anytime soon.”
The Super Bowl ad features a “genie” who grants wishes and can make you wealthy and friends with former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, while Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride plays in the background.
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Frericks said the commercial was “pretty decent,” but empathy was lacking.
“There’s two things to get trust: One, you have to have empathy for your consumer, know who your consumer is,” he explained. “And still, I think a lot of consumers out there are asking for Bud Light to apologize when they called their consumers fratty and out-of-touch last year.
“Secondarily, you build trust with authenticity. Bud Light was loved because it was a brand that was apolitical, was drawn by Democrats or Republicans alike … it was that Super Bowl commercial, but they lost that authenticity.”
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