Sales of top American beer brand Bud Light have continued to slide, months after the company was hit with a consumer backlash over a social media promotion featuring controversial trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

According to new Nielsen data, cited by Yahoo Finance, Bud Light sales plummeted 26.5% for the week ending August 5, faster than the 25.9% week-on-week decline for the period ending June 17.

Volumes of the beer, which is manufactured by Anheuser-Busch, crashed 29.7%, accelerating from a 29.3% decline one week earlier.

“Recent data continues to show that tracked channels reached a point of stabilization at significantly lower levels for Anheuser-Busch InBev than pre-controversy,” Evercore ISI analyst Robert Ottenstein wrote in a note seen by Yahoo Finance.

The declines began after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney shared an Instagram video on April 1 promoting the light beer during the March Madness college basketball tournament.

• The clip featured Mulvaney in a black cocktail dress, elbow-length gloves, and an Audrey Hepburn hairdo feigning ignorance about sports and carrying a six-pack of Bud Light. A second segment showed Mulvaney in a bathtub covered in foam, brandishing a can with the influencer’s face on it.
• The promotion triggered calls for a boycott, including from prominent voices such as musician Kid Rock, who posted a video of himself shooting a stack of Bud Light cases.

Mulvaney lashed out at Bud Light and parent company Anheuser-Busch in a video posted to social media on Friday, accusing them of abandoning the “Days of Girlhood” TikToker, and warning Anheuser-Busch that LGBTQ people also drink beer.

The performer claimed that public reaction was out of proportion with the video shared with her 1.8 million Instagram followers.

• Despite transitioning to female just over a year ago, Mulvaney reportedly made as much as $1 million last year promoting products normally associated with women, including sports bras and tampons.

Source: RT