Could Data Analytics Have Prevented the Bud Light Blow-Up?

How did a company with a brand and marketing heritage of 170 years walk so willfully into such a clearly marked minefield?

I am Nick. I have several passions that drive me: Family, tennis, making beer, and analyzing data to help companies make better decisions. Mistakes in life and business often come down to a failure to see patterns in the data.

With this in mind, while I sipped on a Bud Light the other day, I asked myself: How does a company such as AB InBev so imprudently run straight for a cultural minefield such as transgender issues? I am not a political person but a number guy. When you look at the damage the company did to one of its flagship brands, it really leaves you scratching your head.

What the hell were they thinking? This question resonates with me as a data professional who has guided brands and companies to growth for nearly two decades. Regardless of my personal feelings, whether I agree with Bud Light’s support of the transgender cause or not, it makes me wonder what professional marketers like Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing for Bud Light, and Daniel Blake, who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch’s mainstream brands, were hoping to achieve?

Launching a single and harmless 50-second video obliterated Bud Light’s brand positioning and has cost the company millions of dollars in lost sales. Because of the sales collapse after the video airing, people across the U.S. are losing jobs.

Could a one-hour analysis of some data have led someone in the AB InBev team to speak up and confidently ask: Are we sure we want to do this?

Could data analytics have prevented this blow-up?

Year-on-year, Anheuser-Busch InBev has reported a drop of 10 percent in revenue, and operating profit at the U.S. unit dropped nearly 30 percent.

When the Bud Light brand team launched the “Mulvaney video,” a significant cohort of its key brand enthusiasts were preparing their refrigerators for the NCAA’s March Madness. March Madness is a time of year when the most important thing for an established brand is ensuring no supply chain disruptions. Beer flies off the shelves.

Had Heinersheid and Blake accessed the many data points available, they might have realized that it was not prudent to push the brand, something they were hired to protect for consumers, management, and shareholders, into the very emotional national discussion around gender rights. If AB Inbev felt passionate about the matter, it could have directed some of its profits to the cause of education on the issue.

A simple analysis of this topic and how other brands and companies have been targeted could have prevented the Bud Light team from entering the fray — or at least delaying it when the emotions of March Madness had died down. Has Bud Light shined a positive light on an issue it sought to support? Or has it created a deeper rift?

There are many similarities with Bud Light, and before launching the Mulvaney video on YouTube, someone should have analyzed the data for other well-known brands who stumbled into similar conversations and how they suffered in their respective markets. There are many examples of major brands trying to use advertising to recover from gaffs: H&M in 2018, Dove in 2017, and Uber in 2017.

There is, however, a behavioral tic in marketing and advertising: The more popular and established a brand, the more it loses contact with its core customers. Perched up in the clouds leading the industry, brand ambassadors quickly forget why their respective brands became a leading ones. The Bud Light team trapped the standard corporate silo of “We are Bud Light, we are invincible and so can get away with anything” and stepped squarely into a hot pile of “it.”

Every brand in the light beer segment has grown since the Mulvaney video aired. Bud Light’s retail sales have fallen 42 percent in some U.S. metro areas. The brand had been slowly declining, but the declining curve has turned into a sprint and then a leap off a cliff.

Let data be the unbiased voice in the room

The data does not lie.

There are multiple cases of well-established brands blissfully launching “fresh, new” campaigns that disregard the needs and passions of their core brand users. The launches seem geared more toward juicing the portfolios of the creative teams behind the ads and less for revitalizing a brand’s voice on the market. If Bud Light sought to expand its voice, who was it targeting? Was there data that confirmed a growing interest in the brand within the transgender community?

If we could have been a fly on the wall at the meeting when Heinersheid and Blake decided to move ahead with the Mulvaney video, it probably would have looked something like this: Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing for Bud Light, and Daniel Blake sit with the Bud Light team cheering on the video. When asked if anyone has any doubts, the young analysts and brand managers, fearing being regarded as not part of the team, enthusiastically approve of the brand’s move.

Now, imagine someone had brought up some of the abovementioned cases. While there is no way to compare the Mulvaney video with the racist images put out by H&M and Dove, for instance, Bud Light could have at least had a more transparent, unbiased view of what can happen to a well-established brand when it goes down a path that is entirely contrary to the opinions of its core users.

There are issues of corporate responsibility that may be at play. But, if a corporation kills its brand and then loses its pulpit, does this help to further a cause?

Finding yourself personally not in agreement with the views of your core users is not a reason to throw your brand under the bus. Established brands like Bud Light must “go to the data” before rocking their collective boat. The data will always be the voice of reason when there is a chance emotion is shining a blinding light in the room.