The marketing guru behind Budweiser’s “Whassup!” and “Talking Frogs” advertisements has blasted the company for destroying its reputation.
Robert Lachky, whose adverts in the 1990s helped Budweiser become America’s most popular beer, said two decades of work had been ruined over Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney fiasco.
“It took us 20 years to take Bud Light beer to the No. 1 beer in the country, and it took them one week to dismantle it,” Mr Lachky, Anheuser-Busch’s former chief creative officer, said.
Bud Light has faced a revolt by conservative activists after partnering with transgender social media influencer Mulvaney.
Sales have plummeted since Mulvaney, 26, shared videos of herself drinking from customised Bud Light cans with her own face depicted on them.
Mr Lachky told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bud Light had no one but itself to blame for its drop in popularity.
“It’s self-inflicted,” he said, adding that Anheuser-Busch suffers from “a complete lack of corporate oversight”.
During his tenure at Anheuser-Busch, Mr Lachky created numerous superbowl commercials that gained world-wide recognition.
One where three frogs croak “bud,” “weiss” and “err,” was called “one of the most iconic alcohol campaigns in advertising history” by Adweek.
Another advert, which shows a group of friends calling each other as they sit at home drinking Budweiser as they ask each other “wassup”, helped to define the late 1990s and early 2000s.
During Mr Lachky’s tenure Bud Light overtook Miller Light to become the top-selling light beer in the country.
He left the company in 2009 after it was acquired by InBev, who introduced a slew of cost cutting measures and redundancies.
An ensuing boycott by conservatives following the recent controversy has been blamed for wiping around $4 billion off Anheuser-Busch’s value within days and sales volumes of the beer dropping by a quarter.
Two Bud Light executives were placed on leave in the wake of the marketing calamity.
Executives have tried to bat away criticism by saying that Mulvaney was never actually partnered with them, despite her video including the hashtag #budlightpartner.
Michel Doukeris, chief executive of Anheuser-Busch Global, on Monday blamed “misinformation and disinformation” for spreading rumours that cans with Mulvaney’s face would be sold nationwide.
Mr Lachky told the New York Post that Bud Light was fanning the “flames on their own with their defensive comments”.
In a recent podcast, Mulvaney said the scandal had kept her up at night.
She has said she will not accept spokesman positions from companies looking to “check a box” by partnering with a transgender person.
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