As per a report on Friday, the marketing executive for Bud Light, whose team was in charge of the “disastrous” partnership with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney, has taken a leave of absence.
Alissa Heinerscheid was hired in June 2022 to revamp Bud Light’s marketing with the goal of giving it a new look.
But things went wrong when the partnership with Mulvaney was announced on April 1. This led to a boycott and dropped the value of the company by $6 billion.
Ad Age says that Todd Allen, the vice president of global marketing for Budweiser, will take over for Heinerscheid.
Bud Light has been asked for a comment regarding the same.
Heinerscheid’s team made the Bud Light Super Bowl ad with Miles Teller and his wife Keleigh Sperry, which got a lot of praise, as well as “the Bud Light Carry” ad, which shows a woman carrying a round of beers to a table of friends without spilling a drop.
Those ads were part of Heinerscheid’s plan to make the brand more appealing to women. She has said that this is one of her “passion points.”
But on April 3, the brand teamed up with Dylan Mulvaney, a controversial trans activist with a large social media following. This was a step too far for Bud Light’s loyal customers, who stopped buying the beer.
Kid Rock was one of the first people to criticize the partnership and call for a boycott. Other conservative consumers, distributors, and suppliers followed his lead.
Heinerscheid hasn’t said anything about the scandal.
In interviews, she has been praised as the first woman in Bud Light’s 41-year history to “lead” the company. She went to Wharton Business School.
In an interview with the Make Yourself at Home podcast on March 30, she talked about how she planned to get rid of Bud Light’s “fratty” reputation and make it more welcoming to young drinkers.
I’m a businesswoman. I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was this brand is in decline,
she said.
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.
So I had this super clear mandate. It’s like we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand.
What does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different. And appeals to women and to men.
And representation. Is it sort of the heart of evolution? You’ve got to see people who reflect you in the work.
And we had this hangover. I mean, 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,
she said.
She said the same thing in an earlier interview with Forbes.
As the first woman to lead the biggest beer brand in the world, it’s an amazing opportunity to really evolve and elevate Bud Light, this brand I love.
This campaign is meant to feel different, to be lighter and brighter, with a confidence and magnetism, and it’s really critical to depict real people and real places,
she said.
What I need to do to help this brand to evolve… this is my passion point.
Before her current job, Heinerscheid was an associate brand manager for Listerine. After that, she ran the in-house agency for Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, for seven months.
During that time, the marketing expert says she set up the company’s current “internal influencer agency.” This is a strategy that Bud Light now seems to like since it is marketing through people like Mulvaney.
In an interview with the New York PR magazine Provoke Media last year, Heinerscheid praised companies like Nike for having “culturally relevant campaigns” that include black athletes. She also praised her former employer, General Mills, for having ads that were more “wholesome and real.”
I have always been impressed with how culturally relevant and impactful the marketing is for Nike,
In November, after being named one of its 25 American Innovators of the Year, she told the outlet this.
Also, as a parent,
she added,
there is just something so wholesome and genuine about what General Mills does.
Even though the New Yorker supports progressive ideas, public records from 2016 show that she is a registered Republican and has a family with three young children.
In 2011, she married Henry Charles Heinerscheid, who worked as a consultant for Tapestry Networks in Boston.
She worked for him for five years after she got her English degree from Harvard.
In May 2011, the New York Times announced their wedding.
She then signed up for a $60,000-a-year master’s program in marketing at Wharton, which she finished in 2013.
Since then, she has worked for Cheerios, Listerine, and Anheuser-Busch.
Mulvaney is a transgender woman who became famous on TikTok during the pandemic for her “Days of Girlhood” series. She has more than 10.8 million followers on the platform.
On April 3, Bud Light sent her custom-made cans with her face on them.
This was the start of the Mulvaney controversy. The gift was the start of what is now a confirmed partnership between the two. This was proven by Mulvaney’s next post, which showed her naked in a bathtub drinking a Bud Light beer for her followers.
Anheuser-Busch, the company that owns Bud Light, said in a statement that it supported the brand’s choice to work with Mulvaney, whose videos show her journey.
Anheuser-Busch works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics,
the rep said.
It added:
From time to time, we produce unique commemorative cans for fans and for brand influencers, like Mulvaney. This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.
Customers got even more upset when they doubled down.
People are now calling the move a shameless attempt to get more attention, which fits with the recent trend of companies going “woke” to boost their bottom lines.
Analysts said that it was a strange way to market Bud Light by pairing it with a transgender activist.
I simply don’t understand why they hired the person who was doing the marketing,
said Ted Jenkin, CEO of Oxygen Financial, which he started to help business owners and people with a lot of money get financial services.
He told Fox News Digital:
I mean, if your target customer is Kid Rock, and then all of a sudden you decide to go to RuPaul, that just doesn’t make any sense at all.
Brendan Whitworth, the CEO, said:
We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.
We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.
Whitworth, who was a lieutenant in the Marines, a CIA officer, and a graduate of Harvard Business School, did not talk about the Mulvaney partnership or apologize.
Instead, he showed that he didn’t want to talk about anything that could cause division by saying:
I am responsible for ensuring every consumer feels proud of the beer we brew.
He continued:
My time serving this country taught me the importance of accountability and the values upon which America was founded: freedom, hard work and respect for one another. As CEO of Anheuser-Busch, I am focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage.
I care deeply about this country, this company, our brands and our partners. I spend much of my time traveling across America, listening to and learning from our customers, distributors and others.
Moving forward, I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers across our nation.
Anheuser-Busch had only said one thing about the situation before that: that the Bud Light cans with Mulvaney’s face on them were a gift to the influential person and not for sale to the public.
Anheuser-Busch works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics,
the statement last week said.
From time to time we produce unique commemorative cans for fans and for brand influencers, like Dylan Mulvaney.
This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.
