Up until two years ago, Bud Light was the top-selling beer in the United States. Annual revenue for 2022 was $57.786 billion, up 6.41% on the previous year.
But a disastrous marketing campaign saw sales plummet and Bud Light lost its crown in 2023. Since then, the brand has struggled to recover and rebuild its reputation. The latest figures show Anheuser-Busch’s revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2025 standing at $15 billion – a decrease of -2.15%. Year-over-year it’s down -2.35%.
2023 advertising campaign prompts boycott
So why is the public deserting the brand? In April 2023, Anheuser-Busch launched a marketing campaign in conjunction with TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney, who is transgender. Mulvaney appeared in a video dressed as Hollywood icon Audrey Hepburn promoting the beer during March Madness.
The PR stunt backfired spectacularly, with numerous high profile artists calling to boycott the brand. It triggered a loss of $1.4 billion in sales and a 15.3% drop in revenue.
Now, in a desperate bid to rebuild the brand’s tarnished reputation, the company is looking to one of the hottest stars around – Sydney Sweeney.
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Offended by pun
The 27-year-old actress made the headlines as the face of American Eagle jeans. With the slogan: “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” the campaign went viral, boosting brand awareness and causing sales of AE jeans to surge 23%.
Although not without some controversy, some were offended by the pun, which played on the homophones ‘jeans’ and ‘genes’.
Sweeney could command a fee of up to $10 million by signing an endorsement deal with Anheuser-Busch to get Bud Light sales back to where they were. It’s not known how much she earned for the American Eagle campaign – nor has she made any comment on the backlash it caused.
Marketing strategists agree that Sydney Sweeney would be the ideal choice to front a new PR strategy – maybe it will be just a case of finding a catchy, uncontroversial slogan to go with it.
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