Global Courant 2023-05-11 16:28:59
Dylan Mulvaney
The marketing guru behind Budweiser’s “Whassup!” and “Talking Frogs” ads have blamed the company for destroying its reputation.
Robert Lachky, whose advertisements in the 1990s Budweiser helped becoming America’s most popular beer said two decades of work was ruined about the Bud Light Dylan Mulvaney fiasco.
“It took us 20 years to bring Bud Light beer to the No. 1 beer in the country, and it took them a week to dismantle it,” said Mr. Lachky, Anheuser-Busch’s former chief creative officer.
Bud Light has faced an uprising from conservative activists after she collaborated with trans people social media influencer Mulvaney.
Sales have plummeted since 26-year-old Mulvaney shared videos of her drinking from custom Bud Light cans with her own face on them.
Mr. Lachky told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bud Light had no one but itself to blame for the drop in popularity.
“It’s self-inflicted,” he said, adding that Anheuser-Busch suffers from “a complete lack of corporate oversight.”
During his tenure at Anheuser-Busch, Mr. Lachky created numerous superbowl commercials that received worldwide recognition.
One where three frogs croak “bud”, “weiss”, and “err” was called “one of the most iconic alcohol campaigns in advertising history” by Adweek.
Another ad, in which a group of friends call each other while drinking Budweiser at home while asking each other “wassup,” helped define the late 1990s and early 2000s.
During Mr. Lachky’s tenure, Bud Light overtook Miller Light to become the country’s top selling light beer.
He left the company in 2009 after it was acquired by InBev, which implemented a series of cost-cutting measures and layoffs.
A subsequent boycott by conservatives following the recent controversy, it is accused of wiping out about $4 billion of Anheuser-Busch’s value in a matter of days and sales volumes of the beer have fallen by a quarter.
Two Bud Light executives were placed on leave in the aftermath of the marketing disaster.
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Executives have tried to deflect criticism by saying Mulvaney never actually worked with them, despite her video using the hashtag #budlightpartner.
Michel Doukeris, CEO of Anheuser-Busch Global, on Monday accused of “misinformation and disinformation” for spreading rumors that cans with Mulvaney’s face would be sold nationwide.
Mr Lachky told the New York Post that Bud Light only fanned the “flames with their defensive comments”.
In a recent podcast, Mulvaney said the scandal had kept her up at night.
She has said she will not accept spokesperson positions from companies that want to “check a box” by partnering with a transgender person.
