(Daily Caller)—Companies’ bottom lines are set to recover from conservatives collectively staging boycotts in 2023 after a number of different marketing campaigns and products pushed left-wing ideals, but the backlash has ultimately changed the trajectory of corporate marketing, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Bud Light, owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, lost its spot as the top-selling beer in the U.S. in June to Modelo Especial after conservatives boycotted the brand due to a promotion in April featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, similar to other backlash faced by companies like Target and Disney for left-wing marketing tactics. Conservative boycotts have lacked effectiveness in past years, but the backlash delivered in 2023 may discourage future left-wing marketing ideas as businesses seek to avoid controversy, even if those companies have so far been able to weather the storm, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

“Regardless of what InBev’s senior management or board members believe in their hearts about transgender activism, it seems clear that they are now committed to stepping away from political controversy to the greatest degree possible,” Richard Morrison, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “No company — especially no consumer products company with a wide customer base — wants to be the next InBev, and no one wants one of their flagship brands to be the next Bud Light. I strongly suspect that the Bud Light boycott — and how to avoid one like it — has been the #1 topic of conversation in every big corporate marketing team in 2023.”

Sales for Bud Light have yet to recover following the backlash, down 30% weekly compared to last year, according to CNN. U.S. revenue in the third quarter for Anheuser-Busch declined 13.5% per 100 liters, and sales to retailers declined 16.6%.

Consumer boycotts, particularly from conservatives, have in the past failed to affect businesses and their marketing strategies, with calls to boycott home coffee machine maker Keurig in 2017 after pulling advertisements from Sean Hannity’s show on Fox having little effect, according to Vox. Nike received a bump in profits after conservatives sought to boycott the shoemaker following an advertisement with former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick in 2018.

“With respect to the boycotts, I would say they have had mixed success,” Paul Mueller, senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the DCNF. “On the one hand, Budweiser saw instant and significant backlash that led to change. Target has made some changes on the margins. Disney has mostly dug its heels in but they are certainly still feeling heat. Consumer boycotts tend to be transitory. People initially stop buying products and services because of shock or anger. But they rarely change their long-term buying habits.”

Top retailer Target lowered its sales and profit expectations for the rest of the year in August after its third quarter sales fell for the first time in six years. The decline in sales followed conservative backlash due to the company releasing a pride month collection that included LGBT merchandise marketed to kids.

Target has since appeared to double down on its marketing strategy, hiring Erik Thompson as a senior LGBTQIA+ segmentation and pride lead in November. The company recently sold pride-themed merchandise like rainbow nutcrackers and Christmas ornaments during the holiday season.

Disney faced conservative backlash in 2023 over its inclusion of LGBT characters and left-wing narratives in its new movies, like “The Marvels” in November, which had poor reception and box office performance. In Disney’s 10-K financial statement made public in November, the company recognized its social activism as a risk factor for future performance, noting that profitability could be affected due to environmental and social goals being misaligned with consumer tastes.

Bud light stock seems fine at this moment. pic.twitter.com/MQ8GOrYiMh

— OneALL (@bifta9) December 27, 2023

“Many times the eventual outcome is relatively proportional to the offense,” Mueller told the DCNF. “Budweiser, for example, has basically recovered its stock price for its ill-advised commercials. Target and Disney, however, have faced longer and more significant consequences for continuing in behavior that many consumers don’t like. That being said, both Target and Disney face broader market and industry pressure beyond backlash from their political and social advocacy and stances.”

Anheuser-Busch’s stock price has mostly recovered from the investor pullback following its deal with Mulvaney, after declining rapidly in May from $65.90 a share to $53.40 a share, according to Yahoo Finance. The company’s stock remained depressed below $60 a share until November when it climbed to near previous levels.

Financial institutions have also faced backlash for their use of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors when making investments, resulting in a decline in market share of new bond issuance for ESG investments in 2023.

“There has definitely been a decline in enthusiasm for ESG investing in general in 2023, but that’s likely because of both its own internal contradictions and association with unpopular left-wing policy goals,” Morrison told the DCNF. “ESG in general is much more likely to be focused on climate change and energy use than sex and gender identity politics, but the general association with entities like the World Economic Forum, ‘degrowth’ economics advocates, the UN’s sustainable development goals, and big-government management of the economy has caused a populist rejection of ESG much greater than even a couple of years ago, when the term had very little awareness outside of academic and business conferences.”

ESG investing has gained scrutiny from Republican officials as well, prompting Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to subpoena top financial firms Vanguard, Arjuna Capital, BlackRock and State Street Global in December over allegations of ESG collusion violating antitrust law.

Republican-led states, like Florida and Texas, have previously pulled their money from investment firm BlackRock over the company’s use of ESG investments, totaling $4.5 billion in withdrawals in 2022.

Anheuser-Busch, Target and Disney did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

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New York Attorney General Letitia James is apparently not a fan of Target shifting its position on its “Pride Month” merchandise—which included a “tuck-friendly” swimsuit for men who want to wear women’s suits, an LGBT-themed onesie, and items designed by a company known for its “Satan Respects Pronouns” pin.

In a move that would generally elicit frantic cries about the end of democracy, James, a Democrat, has decided that she and other elected officials, not Target’s customers or employees, should decide the retail giant’s marketing strategy.

“Target’s decision to pull some of its pride merchandise because of backlash from anti-LGBTQ+ customers is wrong,” tweeted James on Wednesday.

“Hatred and bigotry can’t win: New York elected officials and I are urging @Target to reverse its decision and stand up for #LGTBQ+ rights,” she added, saying that she and other elected officials had sent a letter.

.@Target's decision to pull some of its pride merchandise because of backlash from anti-LGBTQ+ customers is wrong.

Hatred and bigotry can't win: New York elected officials and I are urging @Target to reverse its decision and stand up for #LGTBQ+ rights.

— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) June 14, 2023

How is this James’ or other New York elected officials’ business?

Before you bring up Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ war with Disney, remember this: Disney started that by speaking out against the Parental Rights in Education bill, legislation that had the audacity to limit what could be said about sexual orientation or gender identity among kids in kindergarten through third grade.

Target, as far as I know, has taken no positions on New York legislation. Nor did James cite any examples in her tweets.

No, this is just straight-up a politician trying to intimidate a private business because that private business isn’t acting the way the politician prefers.

And by using her government Twitter account and citing a letter signed by her and other “elected officials,” James is making no pretense of acting as a private citizen. No, she’s talking as one of the most powerful people in one of the most influential states in the U.S.

She’s also taking a move straight from the playbook of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who tweeted earlier this year that “California won’t be doing business with @walgreens” after Walgreens announced it wouldn’t sell abortifacient drugs in some states.

California won't be doing business with @walgreens — or any company that cowers to the extremists and puts women's lives at risk.

We're done.https://t.co/OB10cYfm8H

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 6, 2023

Three months later, Newsom’s threat appeared to be mostly bluster. California has now reportedly allowed Walgreens to bid for a major contract again. The state also continues to let Medicaid patients use Walgreens. (But don’t think Newsom had a change of heart. Apparently, it’s likely illegal to ban Medicaid patients from Walgreens.)

Walgreens’ move, mind you, came when 21 states’ attorney generals announced they didn’t think it was legal for pharmacy chains to sell abortifacient drugs in their states.

Still, though, Newsom clearly tried to use California’s economic muscle to force pharmacies in red states to uphold blue state’ values.

Again, democracy is not in fashion when it comes to people who don’t hold the “right” views.

That brings us to the real reason James (likely) is taking this completely inappropriate step: The Left is suddenly in real danger of losing the culture war.

Sure, leftists may have forced same-sex marriage on all 50 states in a 2015 Supreme Court decision that went against the votes of 31 states’ residents. Yes, they might be manipulating laws and regulations to promote the trans agenda, even at the expense of women’s safety and privacy. And yes, they may have captured the boardrooms, Big Tech, the universities, Hollywood, and so many more institutions.

But as the Bud Light boycott and the Target backlash shows, people are beginning to wake up—and realize they’re not alone.

In fact, there are a lot of Americans who have an issue with a man who “identifies” as a woman promoting womanhood. There are a lot of Americans who think that they shouldn’t have to explain to their kids when running errands what a “tuck-friendly” swimsuit is. There are a lot of Americans who think that teen girls shouldn’t have to risk their safety and compete against teen boys in girls’ sports, just because the boys want to say they’re now girls.

Bud Light is no longer the top-selling beer in the country. (Congratulations to Modelo Especial, which took the crown.) “Bud Light sales have been roughly 25% lower year-over-year in every single week since it partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for an Instagram post in early April,” reports CNN. Things are so dire that Bud Light is planning to “provide financial assistance to its wholesalers” and “reimburse fuel for distributors’ trucks,” CNN also reported.

Meanwhile, Target’s stock was at its lowest price in three years Wednesday. It got dinged by Bank of America, which “lowered its price objective from $180 to $145 while saying the reduction is a response to weakened peer multiples, decelerating traffic, and modest mobile app engagement,” reported Fox Business.

Other companies are no doubt taking note.

That’s what leftists like AG James can’t stand.

The Left doesn’t just accept losses. Whether it’s through an activist Supreme Court, lawmaking by bureaucrats, or other moves, the Left is always trying to find some way—no matter how absurdly unconstitutional it is—to get its objectives through.

So, James is trying something new, and effectively saying to Target, “shame if anything happened to that nice business you got.” Even more amazingly, this comes at a time when Target is reportedly getting bomb threats from someone who “accused Target of betraying the LGBTQ+ community,” per The Washington Post.

For once in recent years, the Left is losing a battle in the culture war. But instead of doubling down on their arguments for their views and making the case democratically, they’re resorting to thuggish intimidation.

Article cross-posted from Daily Signal.

“There has been a ‘significant shift’ in consumer preferences,” Catarina Tucker, the founder of Barnastics, told Fox News. “Bud Light, once a popular option, is no longer capturing the attention or enthusiasm of event organizers and attendees.”

Barnastics, according to Tucker, allows customers to build a custom proposal, allowing them to see the demand for certain beverages. And, the data shows that demand for Bud Light “has plummeted completely,” she said, adding that “no one wants it at their event anymore.”

“There are a couple clients that have expressed to me their feelings behind it, and it’s no longer popular,” she remarked to the network.

About six weeks ago, transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney revealed on social media that Bud Light produced a Mulvaney-themed commemorative Bud Light can, while Mulvaney claimed to be in a partnership with the light beer company. Boycott threats immediately followed, fueled by conservative commentators on Twitter.

Last month, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch, Michel Doukeris, said that just “one can” was produced with Mulvaney’s face and suggested that social media-driven “misinformation” and “confusion” was to blame.

The backlash has produced real consequences. In the month ending May 13, Bud Light’s U.S. sales were down 23 percent, according to Bump Williams Consulting. Target’s shares have plunged 20 percent since mid-May, wiping away $15 billion in market value, although that’s partly due to investor concerns about inflation’s impact on shoppers.

A report, citing industry data, found that a Bud Light competitor Modelo Especial is now the No. 1 selling beer. Within the United States, Modelo is owned by Constellation Brands. Outside the country, it is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, which also makes Bud Light.

Bill Newlands, the chief executive officer of Constellation Brands, told Newsweek that the four-week spike in sales had happened “quicker than we had anticipated.” “We thought that would take a little longer,” he continued to say. “We’ve been very fortunate that that’s gone a little quicker than we had anticipated. But what a great position to be in on the beer side.”

Other Boycotts?

Restaurant chain Cracker Barrel now faces calls for a boycott after the company made social media posts celebrating “Pride Month” and promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives.

“We are excited to celebrate Pride Month with our employees and guests. Everyone is always welcome at our table (and our rainbow rocker). Happy Pride!” the company wrote in a post. It included a photo of chairs with an LGBT rainbow flag-like design.

The Texas Family Project, a political advocacy organization, posted photos of the restaurant’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts that critics say are an attempt to force left-wing propaganda into the corporate world. Some, like authors Christopher Rufo and James Lindsay, assert that DEI is merely a Marxist-inspired attempt to implement “left-wing racialist ideology and partisan political activism.”

“We take no pleasure in reporting that @CrackerBarrel has fallen,” the Texas Family Project wrote on social media. “A once family friendly establishment has caved to the mob.”

Cracker Barrel, like many other major corporations, has a DEI section on its website that says “discrimination, overt or through unconscious bias, has no place” at the restaurant.

After critical posts were made against the restaurant chain, the company’s Twitter account responded that its employees take “pride in creating a welcoming, safe atmosphere.”

The criticism and calls for boycotts targeting Cracker Barrel come in the midst of ongoing backlash against Bud Light, Target, and several other major brands. Target last month confirmed that it removed some pro-LGBT merchandise from its shelves after people noted that the company is selling “pride” clothing and items for small children, including infants.

For June, a number of large corporations have attempted to cash in on so-called Pride Month by offering related merchandise to shoppers. Government agencies, too, have adopted the LGBT flag color scheme, while President Joe Biden on Saturday promoted a Pride Month event at the White House as some critics noted that the White House placed the updated LGBT flag—including the transgender colors—in the center of two American flags.

A large number of negative social media posts about Pride this year are attacking companies for sliding to the political left and accusing them of sexualizing or grooming children, according to RILA Global Consulting, which tracks more than 100 million websites and social media pages per day.

That’s an abrupt change from last year, when a majority of negative social media posts were focused on brands being “inauthentic” and not truly supporting the LGBT population even as they expanded their offerings, the consulting group claimed. In May and June of 2022, there were fewer than 400 posts calling for Pride-related boycotts, RILA said. This year, in May alone there were more than 15,000.

The Epoch Times has contacted Anhueser-Busch for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times. Image by Mike Mozart via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

As most people already know, the world’s most popular light lager has seen a collapse in sales following a boycott prompted by a March Madness ad campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The Journal’s chart depicting the fall in Bud Light sales speaks for itself, and the company’s delayed and tepid response to the uproar only seemed to make matters worse.

WSJ chart showing Bud Light's collapse after celebrating "day 365 of girlhood."https://t.co/2IcoNG8uQT pic.twitter.com/rdETbA0Bnl

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) May 22, 2023

This isn’t Anheuser-Busch’s first foray into controversial social issues.

The Journal’s Jennifer Maloney points out that the company has been engaging in social equity-themed advertising for years, including a 2021 Michelob Ultra ad featuring transgender track star Cecé Telfer and a 2022 Bud Light Canada campaign for Pride Month displaying various pronouns .

What Maloney fails to mention in her article is why beer companies — not just Bud Light — are suddenly courting controversial social issues such as nonbinary gender, transgenderism, and third-wave feminism.

The answer is simple: The rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance as the dominant strain of “stakeholder capitalism” has incentivized corporations to curry favor with ESG rating firms , even if it means alienating their consumers.

Unlike traditional capitalism, which seeks to maximize profits by serving consumers, the ESG model seeks to “improve” capitalism by considering other stakeholders besides investors and consumers. Publicly traded corporations are graded on how well they achieve socially desirable metrics, such as combating climate change, advancing diversity and inclusion, and creating a more “equitable” society.

What was intended to be a kinder, gentler form of capitalism has morphed into a kind of economic fascism that places the arbitrary interests of a small cabal of people — asset managers, bureaucrats, global financiers — ahead of consumers.

As the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out , consumers are the true bosses in a capitalist system. They ultimately decide what products are created and purchased, who becomes wealthy, and who becomes poor.

As the Bud Light fiasco shows, ESG places consumers in the back seat. The social equity campaigns are not designed to appeal to Bud Light consumers, but to the ESG rating agencies, which have the power to downgrade companies that fail to dance to their tune.

This is a great deal for the ESG puppeteers. They can make multi-billion corporations move by the mere threat of a bad score, which gives them immense economic and political power.

Elon Musk found this out when Tesla was kicked off the S&P 500 ESG Index in May 2022, even though Tesla is an icon of sustainability. By January, Tesla’s stock, which had been trading at $248 a share, had fallen by roughly 55%.

To what extent Tesla’s collapse in share price stemmed from the company getting booted from the index is unclear, but the point is mostly moot. What matters is the threat of being singled out for an ESG transgression.

What few people seem to realize is that Bud Light’s collapse in sales is not just a threat to Anheuser-Busch. It’s a threat to the entire ESG model.

Up until this point, ESG has thrived because the perceived costs of not participating outweighed the costs of participating. Bud Light’s implosion stands to change that perception, which is precisely why the ESG overlords are striking back.

On Friday, USA Today published a leaked letter showing the Human Rights Campaign had informed Anheuser-Busch “that it has suspended its Corporate Equality Index score — a tool that scores companies on their policies for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer employees.”

“Anheuser-Busch had a key moment to really stand up and demonstrate the importance of their values of diversity, equity, and inclusion and their response really fell short,” said Eric Bloem, HRC’s senior director.

One can almost feel bad for Bud Light. The brand is caught in the middle of a larger war being fought by global anti-capitalists and the bosses of capitalism: consumers. Publicly traded companies should be allowed to go back to serving their real bosses — consumers — which is why the rotten ESG model should be dismantled.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

In the video, a company employee is seen complaining that there are still too many white males that work at the company – but that can be fixed with a massive purge.”

“We’re still 40 percent women and 60 percent men, and still predominantly white. So, there’s still work to be done,” the person states.

The clip then shifts over to a black woman who works at Anheuser-Busch making additional threats against the company’s white male employee base, which is targeted for elimination in order to make the struggling company darker and less male.

“I feel like I finally found my voice as a black woman and I’m not prepared to lose it,” the black woman says.

Watch the video below from the Anheuser-Busch InBev YouTube page:

Will Anheuser-Busch survive its new pro-transgender, anti-white corporate ethos?

Bud Light’s tribute to transgender “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney, a mentally deranged male pretending to be a “female” who was celebrated by Anheuser-Busch for reaching a milestone of so many days “as a woman.”

When America caught wind of Bud Light’s special tribute can for Mulvaney celebrating his “transgenderism,” the brand’s sales figures plummeted. Billions of dollars were wiped off the firm’s valuation and millions of customers were chased off – all so a mentally ill tranny can feel affirmed in his delusion.

Meanwhile, Anheuser-Busch as a whole is trying to become less white and less male with a new “diversity and inclusion” campaign. Lara Laila Gärber, Anheuser-Busch’s European Diversity and Inclusion Manager, revealed that “at AB InBev, what we wanted to do is ensure that diversity and inclusion is fully integrated in our business strategy.”

Ever since partnering with Mulvaney, Anheuser-Busch has been circling the drain. HSBC recently downgraded the company, which is seeing its products sit on store shelves rather than be purchased like they once were before the Mulvaney scandal.

“Why is anyone drinking this garbage in the first place?” one commenter asked, noting just how disgusting Anheuser-Busch products are and were long before Mulvaney appeared on its beer cans.

“I will no longer purchase any beer from the Anheuser-Busch company – done, period,” wrote another. “Even if they do the right thing and kick the trannies to the curb, I won’t support them.”

Numerous others noted that Anheuser-Busch seems to be ostracizing its primary customer base, which tends to be white and working-class – or at least used to be.

“The target audience for trash beers like Bud used to be younger, working-class men. I guess times have changed,” one of them said. “Then again, we stopped drinking that swill about a week after turning 18 (legal drinking age back in the day) after discovering that imported brews were far superior.”

Another commented that it actually makes sense for Anheuser-Busch to have a fake woman promote its fake beer – because what could be more fitting than that?

“It looks like the woke movement is used to destroy all of our trademark corporations on purpose,” speculated another about the true purpose behind all this.

“This leads the U.S. to 3rd world status further. Now the ‘Disneys and McD’s’ of the world will come from other countries. We will be known for nothing.”

Companies that intentionally go woke are just asking to go broke. Learn more at Wokies.news.

Sources for this article include:

• TheNationalPulse.com
• NaturalNews.com
• NATURAL NEWS

In the week starting on May 8, U.S. retail sales decreased by 28 percent compared with the same period a year ago, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by consulting company Bump Williams. That’s an even bigger slide than the 23.6 percent plunge in sales for the week ending May 6, compared with the same week a year ago.

Bud Light’s competitors have seen increases in sales during the same time period. Sales of Coors Light increased by 17 percent, and Miller Lite sales increased by 15 percent during the second week of May, the data show.

In early April, the controversy erupted when Mulvaney, a biological male, posted a personalized Bud Light can and wrote “#BudLightPartner” on multiple social media accounts, drawing confusion along with calls for a boycott of the brand. Some country music singers indicated they would cut ties with the product, and some industry analysts suggested that Anheuser-Busch was seemingly choosing to alienate its customer base by partnering with Mulvaney.

Amid the sales decline, some local distributors have attempted to take action to bring back sales of Bud Light and other Anheuser-Busch products. For instance, the Alabama-based Bama Budweiser distributor released an advertisement that sought to distance itself and Bud Light from the Mulvaney social media posts.

“We too at Bama Budweiser are upset about it and have made our feelings known to the top leadership at Anheuser-Busch,” Steve Tatum, with Bama Budweiser, said in the ad, according to multiple news reports. “The voice of the consumer has been heard, and Anheuser-Busch has taken action.”

The ad also stated: “Mulvaney is not under contract with Bud Light. The videos you may have seen are Mulvaney’s own social media posts that went viral, and many web-based news outlets have distorted the story.” It didn’t elaborate on the distortions.

“You deserve to know the truth, and life is too short to let a couple of individuals decide what you can eat or drink or spend your hard-earned money on. And remember, making friends is our business, not enemies,” the ad said.

Tatum told AL.com that he’s received positive feedback for his ad campaign. However, he said there has been no response from Anheuser-Busch or Bud Light corporate officials. “I’m just trying to look after Bama Budweiser,” he said. “I’ve worked too hard to give it all away.”

Other Changes

Two Bud Light marketing executives, Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake, were placed on leave, according to the company. Anhueser-Busch told a St. Louis-based news organization last week that Heinerscheid would be replaced by Todd Allen, who recently served as Budweiser’s global marketing vice president.

“Given the circumstances, Alissa has decided to take a leave of absence, which we support,” an Anheuser-Busch spokesperson said in a statement at the time. “Daniel has also decided to take a leave of absence.”

On April 14, two weeks after Mulvaney’s post, Anheuser-Busch U.S. CEO Brendan Whitworth posted a statement stating that the company never “intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” although the statement didn’t mention Mulvaney or the boycott. “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

Weeks later, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev, Michel Doukeris, told the Financial Times that the Mulvaney situation was not an official partnership and that one can was produced with Mulvaney’s face, in a bid to distance the brand from the controversy.

Doukeris added that there was “misinformation and confusion” that circulated online that included a Bud Light can with Mulvaney’s likeness on it. He added said that it was “never intended … for general production and sale for the public.”

During an earnings call earlier this month, Doukeris said that Anheuser-Busch would triple its investment into Bud Light over the next summer and that the firm would provide “direct financial support” to affected front-line workers such as distribution workers and truck drivers. The decline in Bud Light sales also represents about 1 percent of the company’s overall global volume, he said.

Robert Lachky, the former chief creative officer at Anheuser-Busch, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a recent interview that the Mulvaney Bud Light can was a significant marketing mistake. Corporate executives, he added, appear to be out of touch with the beer’s consumer base.

“The minute you step into the political or religious spectrum, when you know your target audience is going to have a real issue with this, you know you’ve alienated at least half of your target audience,” he said. “In the end, people don’t like getting preached to, especially when it comes to drinking beer.”

“None of these marketing folks has ever been to a NASCAR race, none has been to a football game or a rodeo,” Lachky noted. “That’s insanity. That’s marketing incompetence.”

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

Over the weekend, media personality Oli London retweeted a post of Mulvaney “getting glam” with Maybelline, which has apparently joined the ranks of companies like Nike who think the best way to sell products to women is by mocking them. But if Bud Light’s $6 billion nosedive is any indication, the damages will be much more than cosmetic.

Within hours, the March 13 video went viral, lighting up social media with calls to #BoycottMaybelline. Several of London’s followers were at a loss, trying to make sense of the company’s rationale. “Why are all of these companies so intent on insulting women?” one asked. This is “a dude who portrays women as ditzy bimbos,” another fumed.

Melanie Johnson agreed, pointing out that “craziest thing about all of this” is that “we do not act like this when we put on our makeup [and] workout and honestly most of us don’t have time for a six pack of bud light while taking a bubble bath… We are usually taking care of children, our homes and working. This is not a representation of women at all. WTF[.]”

Several couldn’t believe Maybelline’s folly, insisting that the L’Oréal-owned line will become the new Budweiser. Together, they derided the brand’s longtime slogan: “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.” In this case, consumers pointed out, “He definitely wasn’t born with it.”

Of course, this isn’t the first cosmetic company that’s gotten torched for its relationship with Mulvaney. Back in October, Ulta Beauty brought the 26-year-old on its podcast to talk about “The Beauty of … Girlhood,” triggering an instant, nationwide uproar.

Along with “gender-fluid” host David Lopez, “You had two grown men tell actual women what it’s like to be a girl, as if they could have any earthly idea,” “Relatable’s” Allie Beth Stuckey tweeted. “That has nothing to do with beauty; it’s lunacy, and it’s insulting.”

Frankly, Madeleine Kearns argued on National Review, “transgenderism is the new blackface.” “Perhaps the greatest silver lining of the transgender movement has been how it exposes the follies of disregarding sex and sexual difference. ‘Womanface’ is the new blackface. It’s time to get outraged.”

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, the cautionary tale that is Anheuser-Busch continued in full disaster-recovery mode. After a two-week shellacking, CEO Brendan Whitworth finally took the hint and put marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid on leave for her prominent role in the fiasco. The millennial executive, who insisted hyping gender dysphoria was the way to grow the brand, was quickly disabused of that notion by everyone from national distributors to country music stars.

“Given the circumstances, Alissa has decided to take a leave of absence which we support,” an Anheuser-Busch spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal. “The decision,” the Journal notes, “wasn’t voluntary, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Her boss, Daniel Blake, also didn’t escape the senior management’s wrath. Blake, “who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch’s mainstream brands,” had been with the company almost a decade when he and Alissa approved the Mulvaney-faced cans that plummeted the company into global chaos and made the beer a mainstream pariah.

According to the latest numbers from NielsenIQ, Bud Light sales were down an astonishing 17% in dollars and 21% in volume for the week that ended April 15. “These numbers are staggering,” Insights Express insisted. “Right now, this is an extremely difficult scenario for Anheuser-Busch, the Bud Light brand, and for AB distributors.”

Budweiser’s implosion should have scared off plenty of CEOs, but as The Political Forum’s Stephen Soukup has argued, most executives fall into two categories: the true believers (the honest woke) and a much larger group of executives who don’t buy the radicalism they’re embracing. But the honest woke are the dangerous ones. They’re the group that doesn’t care about money nearly as much as ideology. If they need to financially kamikaze to advance their agenda, they’ll do it.

“I think we’re way past the point where companies are dabbling in trans activism simply to appeal to a wider audience in order to grow their bottom line,” Family Research Council’s vice president for branding, Jared Bridges, told The Washington Stand.

“They think they’re doing a moral good by making people like Mulvaney as the face of their brand. And in their ‘moral’ universe, this is more important than the company’s profit margin. Corporations who are still beholden to shareholders should take a long look at whether or not they want these ideologues running their brands,” Bridges warned. “They might just run them into the ground.”

Misery loves woke companies. And if Nike, Disney, Bud Light, and others can’t quit their trans extremism, recent history proves: Americans will quit them.

Article cross-posted from The Washington Stand.