How did it become so popular in the first place?
No beverage stays fizzy forever. Bud Light has been America’s best-selling beer since 2001, but its run at the top finally seems to be ending. The troubles started in April, when the brand unveiled a sponsorship deal with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, sparking a massive anti-trans backlash. Kid Rock filmed himself blasting cases of Bud Light with a rifle. A boycott swiftly spread. By June, the Mexican lager Modelo Especial had claimed the top spot in retail sales, according to the market-research firm NielsenIQ. By one measure, at least, Bud Light was officially no longer America’s most popular beer.
The boycott’s success was stunning. Bud Light had been so popular, for so long, that its sudden decline seemed unthinkable. The truth, however, is that its dominance was never as secure as it appeared, and the boycott merely accelerated an existing trend. America no longer shares a united taste for beer. There are more than 9,500 craft breweries in the country turning out flavorful IPAs and fruited sour ales—the antithesis of light lager—and beer faces ever-stiffer competition from cocktails, wine, spirits, and seltzers. Grabbing a light lager is hardly today’s drinking default. Even when it is, no law of nature requires Americans to prefer Bud Light over similarly bland competitors.
“We have the most diverse collection of drinkers in the country’s history, who get to choose from the most diverse collection of beverage alcohol brands that have ever existed,” says Bryan Roth, the editor of the alcoholic-beverage newsletter Sightlines. If Bud Light doesn’t appeal to people, they “can very easily find something that does.”
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Executives at Anheuser-Busch, Budweiser’s parent company, were skeptical. “We think our beer is light enough,” the company’s vice president of brewing said at the time. (In 2008, Anheuser-Busch merged with the Belgian conglomerate InBev to form Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer.)They were quickly proved wrong. Miller seems to have been the first company to discover that having success with light lager is less about how it’s brewed than about how it’s marketed. Miller Lite went national in 1975 with an advertising onslaught featuring professional athletes selling men on a lager that tasted great and was less filling. The message was: Guys can drink light beer too! It worked. Miller Lite became a hit, shipping 5 million barrels in its first full year. Other companies were forced to respond. Coors brought back Coors Light, and Anheuser-Busch debuted Natural Light and Michelob Light in 1977 and 1978, respectively. But the company was reluctant to release a light version of Budweiser, America’s best-selling beer.
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