A former executive at Anheuser-Busch addressed the company’s plan to lay off hundreds of rank-and-file workers after a disastrous ‘woke’ marketing decision earlier this year caused a huge and enduring boycott of Bud Light.
In April, the brand partnered with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, and sales of Bud Light, the former No. 1 selling brand in the country, have since tanked — so much so that now, AB has to lay off workers.
“My feeling is they would’ve been set up for more success if they actually laid off one person, which is their CEO,” Anson Frericks, Anheuser-Busch’s previous president of operations, said on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.” Friday.
“They said they’re trying to set this business up for future long-term success, but there’s no future at this company with the current CEO in place,” he added. “The CEO is accountable for the results of the organization, and the results of the last four months have been terrible.”
Brendan Whitworth, CEO of Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest beer brewer, on Wednesday, said the company did not make its decision to cut hundreds of workers “lightly” but had to focus on “future long-term success,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
“You still have sales down 30% on their top brands. Billions of dollars of shareholder value have been raised, and it’s all due to the decisions made by the top leaders of the company,” Frericks said.
The current CEO of Anheuser-Busch clarified that the layoffs affected corporate and marketing positions in the company’s U.S. offices located in St. Louis, New York, and Los Angeles. The brewery and warehouse staff were not impacted by these layoffs, according to the company’s statement.
Frericks went on to explain why the layoffs should have started at the top.
“Every single CEO, they have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders, not to these stakeholders in the organization that are pushing different agendas, activist agendas, political agendas,” the former exec explained. “If you’re the CEO of a company, you’re the one who’s accountable for the results at the end of the day.”
