A marketing executive for Bud Light described the brand’s image before her tenure as “fratty” and relying on “out-of-touch humor” and signaled her intention to infuse the brand with “inclusivity.”
Clips from a March 23 podcast interview with Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing at Bud Light, circulated on social media after it was revealed that Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender TikTok creator, would become a brand ambassador for the beer.
Heinerschneid appeared on the Make Yourself at Home Podcast and discussed her plans to “evolve and elevate” the brand, which she argued had “been in decline” for some time when she started in her current role.
“I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light. And it was, this brand is in decline, it’s 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,” she said.
Specifically, she expressed a desire to “shift the tone” of the brand and make it “truly inclusive … lighter and brighter and different and [appealing] to women and to men.”
“Representation is at the heart of evolution,” she added.
She also took more pointed shots at efforts to market the brand that predated her tenure as its vice president of marketing, arguing that Bud Light’s public presentation had been based largely on “fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor.”
Heinerschneid used similar language when she spoke with Forbes in February to discuss “ushering a new era for Bud Light” with a particular emphasis on “representation.”
One clip from the March 23 podcast interview has garnered roughly 4.2 million viewers on Twitter alone, and some users have expressed skepticism about Heinerscneid’s approach to revamping the brand.
“Has she ever ordered a beer? I’m not really sure if she understands it. People go to a bar ordering Bud Light or Budweiser or something to that effect- Don’t sit there and wonder which beer offers the most value of inclusivity? LOL,” one user wrote.
“Gone from decline to spiraling … real executives of genius,” another user joked in response to Heinerscheid’s observation that the brand has previously been on the downswing.
In a statement to Fox News, a spokesperson for Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, said that the company “works with hundreds of influencers and the commemorative cans featuring Dylan Mulvaney’s face were “a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.”
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