‘Those Consumers are Just Lost Forever’: Anheuser Busch CMO Steps Down Following Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney Partnership

Bud Light U.S. Marketing Chief, Benoit Garbe chose to resign after a tenure of just over two years at the company. (Photo: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

On Nov. 15, CNN Business reported that Anheuser-Busch’s U.S. chief marketing officer, Benoit Garbe, resigned in the wake of a disastrous slump in Bud Light sales due to the Dylan Mulvaney controversy. Garbe had been with the company for more than three years and more than two years in his current role, per his LinkedIn profile.

This year, Anheuser-Busch saw a 13.5% decline in its third-quarter revenue, despite the brand’s efforts to course-correct after the Mulvaney controversy, which started in April after she posted a video about the beer brand on her Instagram page. Shortly after, multiple Anheuser-Busch facilities received bomb threats. The beer brand has been suffering in sales most of this year due to Conservative-fueled boycotts over the beer giant’s choice to partner with a transgender influencer.

Anheuser-Busch laid off nearly 400 employees in July, mostly within its marketing and corporate sectors. This was just one month after the brand was dethroned as “Most Popular Beer” to Modelo Especial.

In October, the brand made media headlines when it was discovered the beer giant was offering distributors financial incentives to keep Bud Light on the shelves.

According to Fox News, Beer Business Daily’s publisher Harry Schumacher claimed the financial damage was “quasi-permanent, meaning those consumers are just lost forever.”

In a statement, Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth claimed some of the changes within the brand’s executive marketing department would “reduce layers within our organization and better enable our top commercial leaders to drive our business and legacy forward.”

Yet CNN Business paints a more optimistic picture, and Anheuser-Busch claimed that over 40% of its lost customer base expressed that they were willing to give the controversy-filled beer brand a second chance.

“This gives us some certainty that we are moving in the right direction,” AB InBev CEO Michael Doukeris said on a call sharing the beverage giant’s third-quarter earnings. “We have a good grip on what we need to do and how we are proceeding from here.”

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