Dylan Mulvaney is speaking out now about his collaboration with Bud Light. The transgender social media influencer slammed the beer company for not standing by him when the backlash began.
Mulvaney is 26 years old and has been scared to leave his house. He posted to his 1.8 million followers on Instagram that he has been waiting for Bud Light to reach out to him but no one has. Since the advertising campaign during March Madness launched, Anheuser-Busch has lost $30 million in market cap value.
I imagine that Anheuser-Busch would like to ignore Mulvaney for the foreseeable future. It’s been a financial disaster since the company decided to concentrate on some kind of woke campaign to increase its market share by making it clear that the company had no idea who its customer are. Bud Light drinkers didn’t appreciate being smacked in the face. What an insult to everyday beer drinkers that the marketing department at Bud Light thought they were too frat boyish or not progressive enough to attract more consumers.
No one has sympathy for Bud Light, especially given how they have handled the marketing and financial disaster up until now. The CEO of Anheuser-Busch refused to issue an apology. He’s going on some phony ‘listening tour’ road trip to hear from customers. And, two of the employees in this mess were let go from the company. There is a new summer campaign that includes a commercial that lands with a thud if the reaction on social media is any indication. There have been no reports that sales are recovering.
Dylan isn’t getting the attention he craves.
‘For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse than not hiring a trans person at all.
‘Because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and as hateful as they want. There’s should be nothing controversial or divisive about working with us.
‘I have been ridiculed in public I’ve been followed and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.’
Customers weren’t being transphobic if they objected to such a cheesy ad campaign that offended many people. Dylan Mulvaney wants it both ways. He wants all the attention and none of the criticism when it’s just all a bit too much. He made a name as an influencer by pretending to be a girl. He claimed he was transitioning to a female and kept a video diary of his experiences. He is over-the-top in his videos and looks more performance artist than a transgender person. He’s almost camp in his videos. It’s like he’s punking his followers.
Anyway, he said he hasn’t spoken out because he didn’t want to give his critics satisfaction. He did say that Bud Light is a company he loved. He admitted he hid the can with his face on it and now he can’t find it. He’s protecting it, he said.
Mulvaney said: ‘I realized that I needed to protect this can so I hid it somewhere and I can’t find it because I hid it so well.
‘But when I do find it, I feel like it needs to go in a museum, preferably behind bullet-proof glass.
Does he think someone is going to break into his house and steal the beer can? The remark about bullet-proof glass comes from the video Kid Rock made of him shooting Bud Light cans in response to his specially-made can.
The one thing he won’t tolerate, though, he said is for people to say he doesn’t like beer. He loves it he said and always has. There is a difference in the stories as to who approached whom to collaborate. He said Bud Light approached him to do the sponsored video but Bud Light said it was an external agency who asked on their behalf.
As Hillary once said, at this point what difference does it make? Potato, potahto.
Anheuser-Busch has mishandled this debacle so badly that three months after it happened, we are still talking about it. Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth was interviewed by CBS Morning on Wednesday. He avoided answering how much the ill-fated ad campaign cost Bud Light. When asked if he would partner with Mulvaney again, he punted and went into a pre-rehearsed speech about social conversation. He blathered on about the need to “deeply understand the consumer” and appreciate what they want. Good Lord. This guy is never going to get it, is he?
When host Tony Dokoupil asked if it was all a mistake, he refused to answer.
What a mess.
To add insult to injury, Modelo Especial dethroned Bud Light as the top-selling beer in America after 22 years. Go woke, go broke.
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