Get Woke, Go Broke - Bud Light Saga Continues

From USA Today we get the following. Bud Light slips again, falling behind Modelo and Michelob Ultra after boycott

Do we need to go over what they did to completely alienate their customers?

More than a year after a consumer boycott drained the sales of what was once the nation’s most popular beer, Bud Light still has a hangover.

New sales data show Bud Light has slipped in the rankings behind Modelo Especial and Michelob Ultra.

They had lost the #1 spot to Modelo Especial shortly after the boycott started. Everyone, meaning the pundits, said, "Boycotts don't work." Except when they do.

I was briefly trying to get an MBA when I lived in California, mostly because my employer was paying for the bulk of it. Probably the best class I took as a marketing class, and one of the companies we studied was Anheuser-Busch. They were a marketing juggernaut for decades. And then the Europeans, in the form of In-Bev, purchased the company, and drove it into the ground. OK, not into the ground, but out of the #1 spot.

I once worked for an American company that was purchased by a Swiss company. They turned a major played into a regional, struggling company in about 3 years. My cousin worked for an American company that was purchased by a French company. They put it out of business in less than a year.

It took longer than that for In-Bev to push Anheuser-Busch out of the first place spot, and they are probably too big to drive it completely under. But never say never.

Of course the people who had no say in the Woke direction are now going to pay the price for management insanity. Anheuser-Busch announces layoffs affecting workers in Massachusetts

Anheuser-Busch recently notified Massachusetts that it plans to lay off nearly 200 workers at one of its facilities in Medford this fall.

The brewing company is transferring its AB ONE Boston wholesaling facility at 440 Riverside Avenue to Quality Beverage, but some workers could find work under the new ownership.

Of course they would not be selling the distributor, if it was a cash generator. So "could" in that sentence is definitely not "will."