The $27 Billion

Before we begin: Bent Over Club's editorial policy is attack decisions, not identities. Dylan Mulvaney is a person. This article has no opinion on Dylan Mulvaney. This article has a strong opinion on a VP of Marketing who called her own customers "fratty and out of touch" and then wondered why those customers left. One of these things is a personal choice. The other is a $27 billion marketing decision. We are here for the second thing.

The VP Who Called Her Customers "Fratty"

On March 23, 2023 — nine days before the Instagram post that would destroy her career — Alissa Heinerscheid sat down for a podcast called Make Yourself at Home and said the following:

"This brand is in decline. It has been in 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. We need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach." — Alissa Heinerscheid, VP Marketing, Bud Light [CBS News]

Let's pause here. Heinerscheid was Bud Light's first female VP of Marketing. She had been in the role since July 2022 — eight months. In those eight months, she had diagnosed the problem correctly: Bud Light was in decline. She had also identified the correct strategic direction: attract younger drinkers. What she did next was call the people currently buying her product "fratty and out of touch."

This is like a restaurant chef announcing that his menu is too greasy for sophisticated diners — while the greasy-menu crowd is still eating at his tables. The diners heard. The diners left. The diners took $27 billion with them.

And here's the geography of the decision. Heinerscheid was hired in August 2022. Her boss was Michel Doukeris — a Brazilian CEO who took over Anheuser-Busch InBev in July 2021. AB InBev is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium. So the strategy to convince Alabama construction workers to "evolve" past their "fratty humor" was designed by a Belgian holding company, executed by a Brazilian CEO, and delivered by an American VP who had been in the role for exactly seven months. According to former Anheuser-Busch executive Anson Frericks, the campaign was "fueled by the intensive ESG and DEI initiatives begun by InBev's new CEO, Michel Doukeris." [Wikipedia — Frericks quoted] The 20-year #1 American beer was demolished in fifteen months by executives who had never lived in the country where it was sold.

The Post (April 1, 2023)

Nine days after the podcast, Bud Light's marketing team executed their vision of "inclusivity." Dylan Mulvaney — a transgender TikTok personality with over 10 million followers, known for her "Days of Girlhood" video series — posted a sponsored video on Instagram. [CNN]

In the video, Mulvaney was dressed as Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's. She held up a custom Bud Light can featuring her face and the text "Cheers to 365 Days of Being a Woman." She promoted a contest where fans could win $15,000 for carrying as many Bud Lights as possible. She mentioned she wasn't sure what March Madness was, but that "it's a cause to celebrate." [Newsweek]

The partnership had been brokered by an agency called Captiv8. The Instagram post was not age-gated and was not marked as a paid partnership — despite Mulvaney's audience skewing majority under 21 and beer companies being self-regulated to not advertise to minors. [Senate Commerce Committee]

CEO Michel Doukeris would later tell investors it was "one can, one influencer, one post and not a campaign." The Senate Commerce Committee investigation found that Mulvaney had already posted a sponsored Bud Light video on February 11 — tagged #budlightpartner. One can. One influencer. Two posts. One lie on an earnings call. [Senate Commerce Committee]

The MP5 Response (April 3, 2023)

Two days after the Instagram post, rap-rock musician Kid Rock uploaded a video of himself standing in his backyard, wearing a MAGA hat, holding an H&K MP5 submachine gun, and firing approximately 30 rounds into three cases of Bud Light. He screamed: "Fuck Bud Light and fuck Anheuser-Busch." [CNN]

The video received 11 million views. Country artist Travis Tritt pulled all Anheuser-Busch products from his concert tour. Ted Nugent called the partnership "the epitome of cultural deprivation." Multiple Budweiser factories received bomb threats. A distributor in Springfield, Missouri cancelled all appearances of the Budweiser Clydesdale horses — the brand's mascot since the repeal of Prohibition — citing employee safety concerns. [BCcampus Case Study]

When a beer company has to cancel its horses because of a sponsored Instagram post, the marketing strategy has achieved something historically unprecedented.

The Numbers That Never Recovered

That last number is the cruelest. In nine months of recovery efforts — new ads, new spokespeople, free beer giveaways — Bud Light clawed back 1.2 percentage points of lost market share. At a rate of 0.1-0.2 points every three to four weeks. At this pace, full recovery would take approximately seven years. The boycott is not a moment. The boycott is a lifestyle. [Accio 2026 data]

The Brand That Said Nothing and Won Everything

In June 2023, Modelo Especial — a Mexican lager owned by Constellation Brands — became the best-selling beer in the United States. For the first time in history. A Mexican beer outselling every American beer in America. Not because Modelo ran a brilliant marketing campaign. Because Bud Light ran a terrible one. [Yahoo Finance]

Yuengling Light grew 72.3%. Yuengling — America's oldest brewery, founded 1829 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania — became the accidental beneficiary of Bud Light's self-destruction. They didn't run a campaign. They didn't make a statement. They just kept making beer. And America found them. [Accio 2026 data]

The Silence That Made It Worse

Here's the part that separates a marketing mistake from a marketing catastrophe. After the backlash began, Anheuser-Busch had a choice: defend the partnership or distance from it. They chose neither. They chose silence.

CEO Brendan Whitworth released a statement on April 14 — two weeks after the fiasco began — that managed to anger both sides simultaneously. It neither defended Mulvaney nor apologized to boycotters. It said nothing while saying too many words.

On April 14, Budweiser released a new ad featuring Clydesdale horses and patriotic rural landscapes. No mention of inclusivity. No mention of Mulvaney. No mention of anything that had happened in the previous two weeks. The brand that had just declared itself "inclusive" was now running ads featuring nothing but horses, fields, and American flags.

Then it got worse. Anheuser-Busch — the company that fifteen days earlier had positioned itself as a champion of progressive inclusion — hired two Washington, D.C.-based conservative political consultant groups to advise the brand moving forward. [Wikipedia] Within three weeks, the company had gone from woke rebrand to hiring the political operatives their old campaign was designed to alienate. There is no coherent brand strategy that includes both "365 Days of Being a Woman" cans and "let's ask conservative political consultants how to fix this." That's not marketing. That's a company that had no idea who its customer was, then panicked, then had no idea again — in a different direction.

Meanwhile, Dylan Mulvaney waited. And waited. In June 2023, she finally broke her silence. She revealed that in the weeks following the backlash, she had been stalked and personally attacked. She said Bud Light had never contacted her — not to check on her safety, not to discuss next steps, not even to say sorry. [NYT]

"I'm not telling you this because I want your pity. I'm telling you this because if this is my experience from a very privileged perspective, know that it is much, much worse for other trans people." — Dylan Mulvaney, June 2023

Bud Light had managed the remarkable feat of alienating both sides. Conservatives boycotted because of the partnership. The LGBTQ+ community boycotted because Bud Light abandoned Mulvaney the moment it became inconvenient. The brand that promised "inclusivity" had excluded everyone.

In Their Defense: The Brand Was Already Dying

Heinerscheid was right about one thing: Bud Light was in decline before she arrived. Sales had been softening for years. The broader American beer market is contracting — only 54% of Americans now drink alcohol, down from 67% in 2022. Gen Z drinks significantly less than any previous generation. [Accio trend report]

Something needed to change. But there is a difference between evolving your brand and insulting your customers on a podcast nine days before launching a campaign that tests their loyalty. BMW doesn't call its drivers "boring." Nike doesn't call its athletes "tryhard." You can attract new customers without publicly humiliating the ones who kept you #1 for two decades.

The Casualties

The body count: VP Marketing — gone. Her boss — gone. 350 employees — laid off. Clydesdale appearances — cancelled. #1 position — lost. $27 billion — evaporated. The influencer they partnered with — abandoned and never called. The only winner was Modelo, and Modelo didn't do anything except keep making beer.

The "Leave of Absence" That Was Actually a Firing

When Heinerscheid and Blake were removed, Anheuser-Busch announced they had "taken a leave of absence." An internal source later told The Daily Caller the truth:

"To my understanding, if we publicly announced the word 'fire,' it opens up the potential for them to sue us. That's why we said leave of absence." [Newsweek]

Wholesalers were told in person they were "gone gone." All direct reports reassigned. Heinerscheid — the first woman to lead Bud Light marketing — was erased from the company's history. Her sin wasn't the Mulvaney partnership. Her sin was calling her own customers "fratty" on a podcast, and then being surprised when the frat left.

She now works at LIV Golf — the Saudi-funded golf league that is itself a controversy magnet. From "fratty beer" to "Saudi golf" — a lateral move in PR disaster navigation. [Newsweek]

Her replacement told the whole story in three words: Todd Allen. Allen was previously Global VP of Budweiser. His most notable career achievement, per Wikipedia's coverage of the boycott: "leading the push to allow alcohol to be sold at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar." [Wikipedia] Anheuser-Busch responded to a boycott of a transgender-inclusive campaign by promoting the executive whose highlight reel was selling beer in a country where homosexuality carries prison sentences up to seven years. There is no coherent principle at work here. There is only the current wind direction — and it changes hourly.

The Heinerscheid pivot completes the pattern. LIV Golf is not a golf league that happens to have Saudi money. LIV Golf is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia — the sovereign wealth fund of the Kingdom, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — doing golf. It is a soft-power sports vehicle for a state where consensual same-sex conduct is criminalized with sentences ranging from imprisonment to death, where transgender identity has zero legal recognition, and where Pride events are not merely illegal but functionally unthinkable. Public executions are still carried out by beheading in Deera Square, central Riyadh — a location Western reporters have called "Chop Chop Square" for four decades. [Human Rights Watch]

Dylan Mulvaney — the trans influencer Bud Light celebrated with "365 Days of Being a Woman" — could not lawfully appear at a LIV Golf event held in Saudi Arabia as the person Bud Light celebrated her as. Heinerscheid promoted that campaign in April 2023. In September 2024 she began reporting to an organization whose sole funder criminalizes the identity her campaign was built around. The industry framed the LIV Golf hire as a "redemption arc." A redemption arc requires a value to redeem. What the pivot reveals is that corporate DEI positioning — the entire moral scaffolding of "We Believe" and "365 Days" and "authentic representation" — was never a value. It was a market position, priced at $27 billion, that vaporized the moment the market rejected it. Then the same executive priced herself out to a market that pays in Saudi riyals. There was no principle at stake in either transaction. Just supply, demand, and a résumé.

The Real Fumble

Other brands partner with LGBTQ+ influencers without losing $27 billion. Nike sponsored Mulvaney for a sports bra — backlash, but no sales collapse. Target sells Pride merchandise — some boycott, but recovery. The difference is not the partnership. The difference is that those brands didn't simultaneously insult their core customers.

Heinerscheid called Bud Light drinkers "fratty" and "out of touch" in the same breath as announcing a campaign for inclusivity. The translation her customers heard was: "You are the problem, and we're replacing you." Nobody stays loyal to a brand that publicly announces it's embarrassed by its own customers.

The Mulvaney partnership was a match. Heinerscheid's "fratty" comment was the gasoline. The match alone wouldn't have started a fire. The gasoline alone would have evaporated. Together, they burned $27 billion.

Next in the Marketing Chronicles →

Jaguar — Copy Nothing, Sell Nothing

"On November 19, 2024, Jaguar posted a 30-second car advertisement with zero cars. The CCO told journalists he wasn't on drugs. Six months later, they sold 49 vehicles in all of Europe."