(Daily Mail) Bud Light now appears to be giving its beer away for free, following its disastrous partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The beer company is being mocked online for offering a $20 rebate on unsold cases worth just $19.98.
America’s flagship beer brand and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has been in damage control since Mulvaney shared a series of partnered posts with her 11 million social media followers on April 1.
An image of a rebate offer taped onto unsold cases of Bud Light beer has now gone viral and customers have claimed it is a desperate attempt from the company to revive flagging sales.
Bud Light has been mocked for offering a $20 rebate on its $19.98 cases of beer following the company’s disastrous partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney
America’s flagship beer brand has been in damage control since Mulvaney shared a series of partnered posts with her 11 million social media followers on April 1
Commentator Ashley St. Clair shared a picture of the promotional offer on Twitter and poked fun at it.
‘The Bud Light marketing team must still be all women if they think a coupon will get a man’s attention,’ she wrote.
Her post was viewed almost three million times and received tens of thousands of likes and comments.
Other users were quick to hit out at the offer.
Tim Pool said: ’20 bucks for a case of beer that gives you 20 bucks back?
‘Bud light is GIVING AWAY Their beer probably in a desperate bid to make sales look like they are returning.’
While another wrote: ‘Why do they think it was something to do with the price? The level of tone deafness is … well inexplicable.’
St. Clair was accused of sexism for her post, with one user asking if it’s now ‘feminine to be frugal?’
But she replied: ‘Never in my life have I seen a man use a coupon,’ and added: ‘They will literally make their own brewery before using a beer coupon.’
The terms and conditions for the rebate are not clear or if you need to spend a certain amount on groceries to qualify for the $20. Dailymail.com has approached Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch for comment.
Mulvaney sparked widespread fury in April with a post of her sitting in a bathtub while swigging from a custom Bud Light can sporting her face.
She posted under the hashtag #budlightpartner to coincide with the NCAA March Madness tournament, before joking she didn’t know what sport she was promoting.
The disastrous marketing bid has seen sales for the American flagship beer plummet by as much as 20 percent week-on-week.
Comedian Ashley St. Clair shared the promotional offer on Twitter and poked fun at it and others claimed it was a desperate attempt from Bud Light to claw back sales
For the week ending May 6, in-store sales of Bud Light across the US were down 23.6 percent compared to the year before. And the week before that, ending April 29, sales dropped by 23.3 percent.
This follows declines in sales for the week ending April 22, which were at 21.4 percent. And seven days earlier, the dip was 17 percent, according to NielsenIQ data provided to Dailymail.com by Bump Williams Consultancy.
Bump Williams from Bump Williams Consultancy told DailyMail.com: ‘I don’t think the declines in sales/volume will get any worse, but I do think their negative volume trends will continue.’
He said that sales dipping by 20 percent seems to be the new ‘norm’ for Bud Light.
But he added that experts are waiting to see what will happen to sales over Memorial Day and summer selling season to assess if the damage will continue.
Williams, who specializes in the alcohol industry, told the St Louis Business Journal: ‘This seems to be where the brand’s weekly declines have started to settle, falling in that -20% range over the past few week.
‘I wonder if this is going to be the ‘floor’ for expected Bud Light declines moving forward unless something drastic changes.’
Bud Light is seemingly facing outrage and potential boycott from all sides of the political spectrum, though largely centered around conservatives.
The partnership with Mulvaney drew intense backlash from some quarters, with musician Kid Rock posting a video of himself shooting at cases of Bud Light, and country singers John Rich and Travis Tritt dropping ties with the brand.
But media personalities such as Joe Rogan and Howard Stern defended Bud Light’sdecision.
Anheuser-Busch reported first-quarter earnings of $1.65billion, which topped Wall Street expectations.
The brewer posted revenue of $14.21 billion in the period, which also beat forecasts, with the shares rising 6 percent since the beginning of the year and 12 percent in 12 months.
Mulvaney announced her partnership with Bud Light on April 1 and the backlash was immediate
Bud Light sales fell for the fifth successive week following the controversial collaboration and they were down by nearly 24 per cent in the week ending May 6.
