Miller Lite Boycott Calls Grow Over ‘Woke’ Beer Advertisement

A stock photo of Miller Lite and Budweiser (Illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Miller Lite is facing a growing backlash over an advertisement that appears to apologize for imagery of women clad in bikinis in beer commercials that some social media influencers say is a “woke” ad campaign.

“Women were among the very first to brew beer, ever,” actress Ilana Glazer said in the expletive-laden advertisement that showed her walking through a brewery. “From Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to colonial America, women were the ones doing the brewing. Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer? They put us in bikinis.”

The advertisement then shows Glazer walking through a room with prior Miller Lite advertisements that features women in bikinis. Glazer drops a picture in a nearby garbage can, saying: “It’s time beer made it up to women.” In a subsequent news release, the company announced the Glazer partnership and advertisement.

But on social media, the advertisement with Glazer was quickly derided. Fox News commentator Clay Travis, in a Twitter post earlier this week, suggested Miller is following in the footsteps of Bud Light, which created a beer can with transgender activist and influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which Mulvaney confirmed in early April before leading to a significant decline in Bud Light sales since then.

“Miller Lite saw the Bud Light disaster and decided they needed their own woke beer ad. These companies are broken & have no idea who actually consumes their products,” wrote Travis. However, the Miller Lite ad was created weeks before the Mulvaney partnership was announced.

Conservative podcast host Charlie Kirk made a similar comment, writing that “Miller Lite is owned by Coors. You know what to do,” implying calls for a boycott of the beer. Fox Nation pundit Tomi Lahren similarly accused Miller’s advertisement campaign of “going woke,” asking: “Is there anything left for us regular people anymore?”

“This isn’t Left vs. Right but woke vs. the rest of us. It’s time companies figured that out and join the right side of the market and history,” Lahren also wrote, while questioning whether the marketing managers at Molson Coors are cognizant of the type of consumers who drink Miller Lite.

Perhaps most notably, podcaster Joe Rogan noted: “They were taking all those ads that we loved from the ‘80s and they’re just putting them in shredders that was their campaign today, I saw it this morning.”

Similar refrains were made in the midst of viral controversy surrounding Bud Light’s decision to work with Mulvaney, and Anheuser-Busch in late April removed several marketing executives who were in charge of Bud Light’s marketing.

One of those executives, Alissa Heinerscheid, drew negative attention in the midst of the Mulvaney controversy in which she said she wanted Bud Light to push itself away from the “fratty” image it has cultivated for decades to become more “inclusive.”

The CEO of the brewing giant has since attempted to distance the company from Mulvaney and claimed it was just “one can” that was made with Mulvaney’s face, and there was no partnership. Mulvaney, however, had written on social media, “#budlightpartnership,” suggesting there was one.

A six-pack of Bud Light sits on a shelf for sale at a convenience store in New York City on July 26, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A spokesperson for Molson Coors told Fox News that there is nothing “controversial” about the ad. “This video was about two things: worm poop and saying women shouldn’t be forced to mud wrestle in order to sell beer. Neither of these things should be remotely controversial and we hope beer drinkers can appreciate the humor (and ridiculousness) of this video from back in March.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Molson Coors—the company that brews Coors Light, Steel Reserve, Milwaukee’s Best, and more beers—for comment.

Bud Light Sales Drop

As for Bud Light, sales for the beer, according to the latest industry figures, have dropped in the first week of May even further. Sales volumes of Bud Light fell by some 23.6 percent in the week that ended on May 6, according to retail scanner numbers based on Nielsen IQ data.

“Trends aren’t getting much worse, but certainly not getting any better either,” Beer Business Daily said in a commentary on the data, which represented a further decline from the 23.3 percent sales drop Bud Light suffered in the last week of April.

Meanwhile, sales volumes for Anheuser-Busch, the company that makes Bud Light, fell 9.7 percent in the first week of May, a slight improvement over the 11.4 percent drop the week prior, the industry data showed.

Earlier this month, Anheuser-Busch CEO Michel Doukeris told the Financial Times that he believes social media-driven “misinformation and confusion” are what’s behind the backlash that has hurt his company’s bottom line.

“People often talk about this topic in social media like noise,” he said. “You have one fact and every person puts an opinion behind the fact. And then the opinions start to be replicated fast on each and every comment. By the time that 10 or 20 people put a comment out there, the reality is no longer what the fact is, but is more [about] what the comments were.”

And in an April 14 press release, Anheuser-Busch’s U.S. CEO Brendan Whitworth said the company had no intention creating division. But he did not mention Mulvaney nor the controversy surrounding the company.

“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer,” said his statement. “I care deeply about this country, this company, our brands, and our partners.”

He added: “I spend much of my time traveling across America, listening to and learning from our customers, distributors, and others. Moving forward, I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers across our nation.”

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.