OAN’s Brooke Mallory
6:05 PM – Wednesday, January 31, 2024
After a disappointing year in sales for the brand, popular stand-up comedian Shane Gillis will now be collaborating with Bud Light, the company announced on Instagram.
“Welcome to the team @shanemgillis, excited to be a part of your 2024 tour,” the beer brand posted.
“Excited to announce partnership with Bud Light #budlightpartner,” Gillis posted to his Instagram account.
Sales of Bud Light fell last year after word spread that the company had teamed up with transgender activist and influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
When Mulvaney was named a Bud Light ambassador to support the March Madness basketball tournament, the company faced a months-long boycott.
Bud Light’s sales fell precipitously as a result of the arrangement, causing outrage and making the brand no longer the best-selling beer in America.
Apart from the collaboration with Mulvaney, Alissa Heinerscheid, the marketing vice president of Bud Light at the time, shared her opinions about the brand’s customers in a video interview. Her “belief” that to grow and raise a brand is to embrace “inclusivity, it means shifting the tone, it means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive, and feels lighter and brighter and different, and appeals to women and to men.”
“Representation is sort of at the heart of evolution, you have got to see people who reflect you in the work,” she continued. “We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out of touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
According to reports, Heinerscheid has since been let go from her position.
However, Gillis has experienced cancel culture on his own, or rather, attempts to cancel him. The comedian was previously recruited by Saturday Night Live in 2019 in order to have a future spot on the show. However, he was sacked shortly after due to the resurfacing of old jokes from a podcast where he was imitating someone and used the term “ch*nks,” a racist term for the Chinese.
“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” the show stated at the time. “We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.”
Although Gillis is also known to imitate former President Donald Trump in a joking manner, his audience base typically leans much more conservative. He has even been seen shaking hands with Trump during live UFC fights alongside other celebrities and Trump family members.
Gillis is also a favorite on The Joe Rogan Podcast and the Kill Tony Podcast. Kill Tony is known to be “pro-free speech,” and the show takes place in front of a live audience in Austin, Texas.
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