Behind the Backlash Against Bud Light’s Transgender Influencer

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After Dylan Mulvaney promoted the beer on Instagram, well-known conservatives called for a boycott. Two executives at Anheuser-Busch, the beer's maker, are taking a leave of absence.

By Amanda Holpuch

Some conservative commentators and celebrities began calling for a boycott of Bud Light after the beer was featured in a social media promotion by a transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, on April 1.

After Bud Light's sales slumped and the brand found itself thrust into the nation's culture wars, Anheuser-Busch, the beer's brewer, announced last week that two of its executives were taking a leave of absence. The company also said on Thursday that it would focus its marketing campaigns on sports and music.

Ms. Mulvaney is popular on TikTok, where she has more than 10.8 million followers and has been documenting her transition online. The controversy began on April 1, when she posted a video on her Instagram account, where she has 1.8 million followers, to promote a Bud Light contest.

Ms. Mulvaney, 26, celebrated one full year of her "Days of Girlhood" series in March with a live show at Rockefeller Center called "Dylan Mulvaney's Day 365 Live!"

Her Bud Light promotional post was less than a minute long and was mostly about a $15,000 giveaway that the company sponsored during March Madness. She mentions that the company sent her a tallboy can with her face on it to celebrate the 365-day milestone.

Ms. Mulvaney has become more popular in the year since she created "Days of Girlhood." In October, she spoke with President Biden at the White House about transgender rights.

This success has met with personal attacks from public figures, including Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, and Caitlyn Jenner, the Republican transgender woman and former Olympian whose politics have made her a target of criticism from members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

Ms. Mulvaney has not spoken directly about the Bud Light boycott, but she addressed the hostility she has faced in an interview on the "Onward With Rosie O’Donnell" podcast that was released on Tuesday. She is "an easy target," she said, "because I’m still new to this."

"I think going after a trans woman that's been doing this for like 20 years is a lot more difficult," she said.

She added, "But what is their goal?"

The calls for a boycott have not included a specific demand. And some of the most prominent voices backing it have attacked the transgender community in the past, including the musician Kid Rock, who posted a video of himself shooting a stack of Bud Light cases this month.

The criticism of Bud Light, amid other complaints about brand partnerships with transgender people, comes as Republican state lawmakers are proposing legislation that seeks to regulate the lives of young transgender people, restrict drag shows in a way that could include performances by transgender people, and require schools to out transgender students to their parents.

Anna Tuchman, associate professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, has researched boycotts, including the calls for people to stop buying Goya Foods products in 2020 after the company's president praised President Donald J. Trump. Her research and other similar studies have found that such efforts tend to be short-lived and don't have a long-term effect.

Professor Tuchman said that, while people may be willing to change their behavior for a few weeks, it is much harder to convince people to change their long-term behavior.

Another obstacle in boycotts is finding replacement products.

Anheuser-Busch sells more than 100 brands of beer in the United States and is the largest beer brewer in the world.

One supporter of the boycott, Representative Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, posted a video online to show that his fridge did not have Bud Light, but it did have beer from Karbach Brewing Company, which is also owned by Anheuser-Busch.

A "buycott" is when people buy a product to protest a boycott against it. Professor Tuchman found that during the Goya boycott the company's sales rose by 22 percent over two weeks before falling back to the baseline.

After the country musician Travis Tritt said that he would stop including Bud Light in his tour rider, Kevin John Wasserman, the guitarist for the Offspring who goes by Noodles, said that the band would include Anheuser-Busch products in its rider.

Before the boycott, Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, said in an interview that the brand needed to be more inclusive.

"The brand is in decline," Ms. Heinerscheid said on the "Make Yourself at Home" podcast in March. "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."

Ms. Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake, who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch's mainstream brands, are now on leave, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

"We have made some adjustments to streamline the structure of our marketing function to reduce layers so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brands’ activities," Anheuser-Busch said in a statement. "These steps will help us maintain focus on the things we do best: brewing great beer for all consumers, while always making a positive impact in our communities and on our country."

On Thursday, the company said it would focus marketing efforts on sports and music and would assign senior executives to oversee those campaigns. One executive said during a call with analysts that the product "should not be the focus of the debate."

L.G.B.T.Q. people in the United States have an estimated $1.1 trillion in annual purchasing power, according to a 2019 report by LGBT Capital, a financial services company.

Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization GLAAD, said in an emailed statement that marketing featuring L.G.B.T.Q. people would continue. "Companies will not end the standard business practice of including diverse people in ads and marketing because a small number of loud, fringe anti-L.G.B.T.Q. activists make noise on social media," she said.

Ms. Mulvaney, who hadn't posted on TikTok since the start of the controversy, returned to the platform on April 28 to address her fans and the backlash. "What I’m struggling to understand is the need to dehumanize and to be cruel," she said. She added that she hopes to return to making people laugh and sharing parts of herself that have nothing to do with her identity, and thanked supporters who may not fully understand or identify with her.

Amanda Holpuch is a general assignment reporter. @holpuch