Chick-fil-A, Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney lead woke files in Gasparino’s new book

A new book by FOX Business Network senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino entitled "Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America" delves into how activists on the left have pulled companies into aligning with their ideological agenda which spurred an anti-woke blowback.

Gasparino, a New York Times bestselling author and a business journalist with more than 30 years of experience, begins by recounting a scene at Goldman Sachs in 2019 in which a group of young associates preparing for a late night at work debated "whether it would be bigoted to chow down on those delicious (but too greasy for my taste buds) chicken sandwiches from the local Chick-fil-A restaurant."

The Atlanta-based fast food chain and its founder, S. Truett Cathy, had donated to conservative causes and other charities and to this day closes the company's restaurants on Sundays to give employees the day off. Though the elder Cathy died in 2014, he left the company to his son Dan, who is also an evangelical Christian. Connections between Chick-fil-A and conservative causes, including hot-button social issues, made the company a frequent target of left wing activists.

"That's why all hell broke out inside a conference room at Goldman Sachs when someone suggested that Chick-fil-A was needed to power through another deal night. As it was relayed to us, the enthusiastic suggestion sounded like a good idea until someone brought up Cathy's alleged anti-gay beliefs. So did another and another, we discovered in our reporting. A voice of semi-reason reminded the group that Cathy might be a bad dude, a bigot no less, but there was no blanket ban at Chick-fil-A on same-sex marriage. Chick-fil-A, he said, might just pass the woke litmus test," Gasparino wrote.

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He explained that his sources at the bank said the "debate was intense enough that it made its way to Goldman management, themselves an increasingly woke bunch." The incident prompted them to check with human resources about whether eating Chick-fil-A "passed the proverbial woke smell test" – which it did.

Goldman Sachs told Gasparino that the company couldn't rule out that the incident happened but found no "evidence" for it having occurred. Gasparino wrote that the episode exemplified the "horrific corrosive effect corporate wokeness is having on American business and our culture," which has since spread beyond "the weird mindset of of a few Millennials and Gen-Zers debating the racism of eating a chicken sandwich" into corporate management and boardrooms.

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The book also chronicles a more recent and financially consequential example of corporate wokeness in Anheuser-Busch's controversial Bud Light promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Bud Light was the top-selling beer in America at the time of the promotion with Mulvaney, who identifies as a woman and had met with President Biden for an interview in October 2022 to celebrate her gender transition.

"A brand team run by Alissa Heinerscheid, the first woman to manage the marketing of the nation's most popular beer, made the move to hire Mulvaney as a company-paid influencer," Gasparino wrote. He noted that Bud Light sales had peaked years earlier and the brand was facing increasing competition from craft beers, hard seltzers and spirits. That helped precipitate a pivot to "appeal to a woker demo, like urban hipsters with disposable income."

"With that as a backdrop, it becomes clear why Heinerscheid decided to change Bud's macho image to something 'less fratty' and more 'inclusive' (her words), and how a transwoman influencer might just do the trick," Gasparino wrote.

BUD LIGHT SALES STILL SUFFERING IN US A YEAR AFTER CONTROVERSY

In early 2023, after Mulvaney's social media posts went viral – including one with her face emblazoned on special Bud Light cans as part of a March Madness promotion – a boycott by angry customers began. As Gasparino wrote, "Sales tanked and showed no signs of reversing; the fallout began affecting sales of Budweiser, not just the low-cal version. The stock of Anheuser-Busch's parent company, AB InBev, was in free fall."

The company placed Heinerscheid on involuntary leave as well as Daniel Blake, who had led Anheuser-Busch's marketing and told people he was unaware of the Mulvaney ad campaign. Despite efforts to counter-program the controversy with a return to ad campaigns more in tune with Bud Light's historical image, the damage had been done and the company struggled to regain its footing.

"'Let's face it, Dylan Mulvaney is too political, and that was the basic mistake these guys made,'" a former AB InBev marketing executive told Gasparino on the condition of anonymity because he has signed a confidentiality agreement with the company. "'This was like putting Joe Biden or Donald Trump on a can. You're bound to piss off at least half the country.'"

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The uproar cost Bud Light its lead as the top-selling beer brand in the U.S. as it was surpassed by Modelo Especial in June 2023. 

More than a year after the controversy began, Bud Light was passed in the beer brand rankings again, with Michelob Ultra vaulting ahead of it in terms of sales as of July 2024.

Gasparino's book is set to be released on August 6.