Bud Light’s controversial partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney could have been a “strategic” attempt to permanently alter the brand’s audience, according to an anonymous former employee. …

“[Employees] expressed the fact that they were shocked. ‘Why would they do this? What were they thinking?’ Especially now. This is the worst; it’s like the worst time yet, the best timing yet if a company were trying to change the way it operates from a corporate level. And that’s just my opinion,” he said to OutKick’s Tomi Lahren.

“Many of us are talking about that like they planned it in a way … like a strategic destruction of Bud Light.”

[Naaah, but it’s fun to contemplate. It’s clear that A-B/InBev wanted to broaden the market for Bud Light, but that their execs bungled it by insulting their existing customer base. No one in their right mind would destroy a valuable brand like this on purpose. They just had no idea how their consumers think. — Ed]