Lone Member Splits with Beer Compliance Board, Says Bud Light Violated Code by Marketing to Minors
Bud Light’s problems were already bad enough.
A brand that deliberately turned its back on its traditional customer base has paid the price for it from corner markets to the stock market.
Now, a dissenting vote in a review board that monitors beer industry marketing has accused it of doing something even worse — and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday was making sure Americans know it.
First, the good news for the beleaguered beer brand.
According to Newsweek, a 2-1 vote of the Beer Instittute’s Code Compliance Review Board found that Bud Light had not violated marketing codes through its partnership with the now-notorious “transgender” influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The bad news is, that one vote against Bud Light could hurt.
The roots of the review were a May 17 letter from Republican Sens. Cruz and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asking if Bud Light’s partnership with Mulvaney violated an industry code’s “prohibition on marketing to minors.”
The letter — which detailed various Mulvaney TikTok videos that appeared geared toward a much younger audience than those of legal drinking age — called Bud Light’s Mulvaney partnership “starkly similar to the discredited and now illegal marketing campaigns of cigarette manufacturers that used youth-favored advertising tools such as ‘Joe Camel’ in an attempt to develop early brand loyalty with children who were legally prohibited from smoking cigarettes.”
It cited comments made by Alissa Heinerscheid, the Bud Light executive responsible for the Mulaney partnership, during an interview that became public in March stating that, “This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light.’” (Heinerscheid, along with her boss, were placed on a leave of absence amid the debacle.)
When the senators got no satisfactory response, Cruz in June sent the Beer Institute a lengthy memo “challenging all advertising and marketing materials stemming from Anheuser-Busch’s partnership with Mulvaney.” (Emphasis in the original.)
The board’s decision Tuesday was in Bud Light’s favor, according to a news release issued Tuesday by the Senate Committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation, where Cruz is the ranking Republican in the GOP minority.
But the losing vote — cast by former Tennessee state Judge Paul Summers — spoke loudest, Cruz said in the news release.
“This is the first time a review board member — and notably, the board’s only lawyer — has concluded that a brewer violated industry code prohibiting the marketing of alcoholic beverages to underage individuals,” Cruz said in the release.
“I applaud Judge Summers for having the courage to state what is self-evident: Mulvaney’s persona ‘looks and acts like a little girl’ and ‘appeals to little children and often behaves like one.'”
That’s a brutal description of Mulvaney’s grating persona, but it’s fitting. Under the guise of living a “transgender” life, he presents a caricature of feminity that comes across as somewhere between a hyperactive 11-year-old girl and a narcissistic teenager — neither of whom are old enough to drink. (The fact that the seems to need a shave half the time he’s wearing a tutu just makes the act more stomach-turning.)
In addition, Mulvaney’s chief claim to fame before the Bud Light burnout was a series of TikTok videos called “365 Days of Girlhood.” Individuals in “girlhood” are also not of legal drinking age.
As Summers wrote, according to the committee’s news release:
“The entertainer enjoyed being accepted by young children. The actor celebrated the 365 days of ‘Girlhood.’ An actor, entertainer, or social media influencer, Mulvaney appeals to persons below the legal drinking age with a ‘special attractiveness.’ Mulvaney is especially attractive to young teens and girls; is often recognized as preadolescent; and caters to very young people. [Anheuser-Busch] knew all this, or the company’s leadership should have known.”
The board’s vote likely decides the question — at least officially — about whether Bud Light’s marketing was deliberately intended to influence underage individuals. There’s a fine line between the youthful demographic beer companies traditionally target and those who are only a few years younger. And the majority of the board found in the brand’s favor.
But Summers’ observations didn’t do Bud Light any favors.
The company has already lost its top spot among American beers with a disastrous decision to partner with an emotionally disturbed man-child pretending to be a woman. Now it’s standing credibly accused of doing so with the intent of influencing those too young to buy alcohol to get on the path of drinking far too early.
No matter how bad Bud Light’s problems are now, they can always get worse.
And if Summers’ opinion is right, the company deserves every bit of trouble that comes its way.
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