Bud Light has lost billions of dollars since teaming up with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for an ad campaign earlier this year. We previously reported that in a desperate attempt to win back consumers, Bud Light had announced that it would be going on tour this summer.
The “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary, however, does not think that this will be enough to save the brand of Bud Light. In fact, he thinks the company’s downfall has been so drastic that he wants to teach college students about it as a lesson on how not to do business.
Kevin O'Leary on Bud Light's sales collapse:
“This has never happened before. No beer brand has ever lost 25% market share in a matter of hours. It’s so unprecedented that there’s no playbook for this. Beer brands take decades to build and usually are fighting [for] 1%-2% share" pic.twitter.com/eMUgcR2w9g
— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) June 28, 2023
O’Leary Sounds Off
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” O’Leary said of Bud Light’s summer tour plan, according to Yahoo News. “He’s going to get an earful, there’s no question about it. The problem with that tour and that idea is it keeps it as a frontline press item.”
“Beer brands take decades to build and usually are fighting [for] 1% to 2% share per year by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising,” he continued. “This has never happened before. No beer brand has ever lost 25% market share in a matter of hours. It’s so unprecedented that there’s no playbook for this.”
The New York Post reported that in the week that ended on June 17, Bud Light sales dropped by a whopping 28.5% from where they were at this time last year.
The CEO of Anheuser-Busch /Bud Light/, is reportedly planning 2 go on a tour to listen to consumers. 😆
“This has never happened before. No beer brand has ever lost 25% market share in a matter of hours. It’s so unprecedented that there’s no playbook for this.” Kevin O’Leary pic.twitter.com/VrODCi3tMR
— Krossa Kat 🪙 (@ClublessKat) June 28, 2023
‘Gift That Keeps On Giving’
“Beer is a commodity, the only difference is brand, so you really have to protect your brand every way you can,” O’Leary added. “If you don’t understand who’s buying your brand and you enrage them, which seems to be what happened here, you don’t know the outcome. And now we can measure it — 25% market share.”
This is why O’Leary thinks college students should study what happened to Bud Light.
“This is so extraordinary that I’m planning to teach it this fall in the colleges that I visit and guest lecture at. I’ve never seen a brand case like this one,” he concluded. “Bud Light is the gift that keeps on giving.”
Kevin O'Leary explaining the Bud Light problem.@kevinolearytv https://t.co/yvrnnfQCHD pic.twitter.com/LKAqNv0ZMs
— Renato Lopes (@renatopllopes) June 4, 2023
Related: Bud Light Launches Most Desperate Effort Yet To Win You Back
O’Leary’s Previous Comments
In another interview earlier this month, O’Leary said that CEOs of other companies should look at Bud Light’s current situation as a warning.
“On one hand, companies want to show their support of diversity in all the mandates that society is discussing openly,” O’Leary told Fox News. “On the other hand, the job of a business — particularly from the perspective of an investor — and those that are retired, for example, that own the S&P 500 or own Target stock – are concerned that maybe they’re losing their way in terms of what the prime objective is: your customers, your employees, and your shareholders.”
“And so if you start to get too distant or too far away from the primary mandate, the market has proven itself to really, really punish you,” he continued. “And it’s woken up all kinds of boards.”
Watch O’Leary talk more about this in the video below.
At this point, it can’t be denied that Bud Light has learned that “go woke, go broke” is more than just a mantra: it’s a reality. In the end, college students really should learn a lesson from Bud Light, as the next generation of American businessmen and women should know not to be as foolish as this brand was.
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