Purpose campaigns—including weighing in on social causes or diversity and inclusion issues— have always come with some risk for brands. But in recent months, these risks have come to include marketing leaders coming under media and social-media attacks, even experiencing reported death threats, over their campaigns.

The fallout already has resulted in two Anheuser-Busch InBev executives going on a leave of absence in the wake of conservative blowback against the brand’s use of transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, and a Molson Coors executive taking down her social media accounts last month after being doxed by right-wing critics upset over a Miller Lite Women’s History Month campaign.

And beyond marketing, Target cited threats to employees among the reasons it removed or downplayed Pride Month LGBTQ+ merchandise in some stores. Chick-fil-A, long favored by conservatives who supported founder S. Truett Cathy and his son/Chairman Dan T. Cathy’s statements against gay marriage, recently has come under fire for employing a head of diversity, equity and inclusion, Erick McReynolds—despite the fact he has been in the role since at least 2020. 

It all raises the question of whether recent targeting and doxing of individual executives, including high-ranking marketers, will have a chilling effect on other industry leaders undertaking purpose or cause-related campaigns. It appears the answer is yes, based on comments from industry sources and given that few were even willing to talk on background about the topic.

“Everyone is talking about this,” said former Procter & Gamble Co. chief marketer Jim Stengel, who is now a consultant. “It’s in almost every conversation. The level of scrutiny is going to go up.”

Personal attacks a new frontier

Brands have long faced criticism when weighing in on anything deemed political, but the element of personal attack is a new dynamic that is bound to have marketers rethinking how they do things, said Lisa Mann, manager of the consumer practice and chief marketing officer of executive placement firm Raines International.

Mann was a marketer at Mondelēz International overseeing Oreo when the brand came under attack in 2012 over social media posts showing cookies with rainbow-colored fillings. Comments on its Facebook page were often nasty, but she and other marketers weren’t hunted down and individually attacked on social media. It’s been different lately with beer marketers in particular.

“It’s hard to predict what response you’ll get,” Mann said. “Brands still need to be transparent and authentic. But I do think everything is personal now, and it’s just hard to protect yourself.”

The most notable case, of course, is the Bud Light saga, which began in early April when Mulvaney’s Instagram post of her image on a Bud Light can set off a firestorm of attacks from conservative politicians and celebrities, including a viral video of Kid Rock shooting up cases of the beer, and created an uproar on social media. 

Criticism quickly evolved into personal—often ugly—attacks on Bud Light marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid, who had recently pushed the brand into more inclusive marketing. Critics found and spread old photos from personal social media accounts of her partying in college in an attempt to suggest she was a hypocrite for wanting to move Bud Light away from “fratty” humor, as she suggested on a podcast. Tucker Carlson referenced the podcast and showed the college photos of Heinerscheid on Fox News before he was ousted from the network.

Heinerscheid took down her profile on LinkedIn and public Facebook page, as documented by the Wall Street Journal. The Daily Mail more recently tracked Heinerscheid down paparazzi-style for a photo outside her Manhattan apartment, documenting it in a June 1 article.

On April 21 she went on leave, along with another marketing executive, Daniel Blake, who oversees the brewer’s mainstream brands. There have been conflicting reports on whether the leaves were forced or voluntary, with the brewer only commenting that the “safety and welfare of our employees and our partners is our top priority.”

Heinerscheid did not return a phone call or text for comment. Blake declined to comment.

Active but furtive discussions

The issues around Bud Light, and personal attacks on marketers, are being widely discussed among marketers in private and inside company offices, even if they’re mostly reluctant to talk about it publicly.

One company, which also has worked with Mulvaney, has had numerous internal discussions among marketers about lessons from the Bud Light saga.

“When we talk about this inside the company, the idea is that topical areas that are true to a brand’s purpose are the most powerful way to connect with consumers,” said the company’s chief marketer, who declined to be identified by name or company. “The negative side is when you start to dabble around and skirt the edges of what you want to be known for, or even straddle both sides, which is what one might accuse AB of. For me, personally, when you’re truly authentic and aligned with a brand’s ethos and user base, you end up in much less dangerous territory.”

This person doesn’t believe the experiences of beer industry executives will necessarily have a chilling effect inside this person’s company—depending on how you define chilling. “I think it makes [marketers] more thoughtful about the way they show up and what they support,” the executive said. “You could call that a chilling effect, and it may appear that way for some brands. But I think it’s about authenticity.”

This person doesn’t expect the company's marketers will back away from personal social media use. But they may be careful about how they express themselves. “Anyone with their ear to the ground in marketing and really in touch knows they have to be on social media,” the marketer said.

Stengel said the AB InBev matter in particular is one more example of conflating brand purpose with cause marketing, including the risk of going beyond what a brand’s purpose is. This isn’t going to make companies back away from commitments to DE&I, Stengel said. But, he added, scrutiny on marketing activations and partnerships is likely to increase. “All that is being looked at more carefully,” Stengel said.

Re-evaluating personal branding

Marketers have long been advised to advance their personal brands, largely through social media, but they’re going to need to re-evaluate how they do that in light of the growing personal attacks, Mann said.

“Marketers have to be mindful of the divisiveness and really be having the right conversations,” she said. “The process of posting I think is more significant now.”

People want to be brave or courageous “but that can have a risky undertone,” she said, adding that marketers now need to understand “that a personal brand is intertwined with the brand and the company.”

For marketers concerned about their future careers, how they approach social media probably should also depend on where they want to work, Mann said. She pointed to the extensive Pride Month marketing fashion brand Cole Haan has done in Manhattan, for example. 

“A marketer whose ambition is to work, let’s say, as head of marketing for MyPillow would be very different than if they wanted to be a marketer for Cole Haan one day” when it comes to social media activity, Mann said. “That’s something that needs to be thought through because the risk needs to be mitigated for their brand and their employer.”

David Wiser of Wiser Partners, who specializes in packaged-goods executive placements, advised marketers to be “crystal clear on your brand’s positioning,” including who the targets are, and that decisions are “always well informed by quality research and insights.” He cited Nike’s 2018 embrace of Colin Kaepernick with a controversial campaign that produced social media blowback but resulted in a sales and stock price spike. 

“Smart business decision,” Wiser said, “regardless of what you think about Colin Kaepernick.”

Wiser said he’s “100% certain” the Bud Light incident will hurt Heinerscheid’s and Blake’s prospects with some companies and hiring executives. “But I’m also 100% certain it could boost their career prospects with other companies and hiring managers. Mama always told me, ‘There’s a lid for every pot.’”

Need for stronger industry support?

The Association of National Advertisers, which long has backed purpose initiatives and has an Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, among other efforts, wants marketers to stay the course despite any blowback they encounter.

“We tell our members that if you believe in [diversity, equity and inclusion] and it’s important to you, then walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk, and stand by it,” said spokesman John Wolfe. He said the organization, for example, supports The Walt Disney Co. in standing up for its principles in the face of legislation and government retaliation for its stand in Florida, which has included opposing legislation that limits classroom teaching about gender identity.

Industry support for companies, and particularly individual marketers, caught in the crossfire of controversies needs to be stronger, said Lisette Arsuaga, co-CEO of DMI Consulting and co-founder of the ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM).

“We’ve heard at AIMM a lot from our LGBTQ members,” Arsuaga said. “There’s a trepidation from marketers, and understandably so, because of the marketers who have been targeted, a trepidation for marketers to speak up. There’s a silence that we haven’t necessarily seen before, especially during Pride Month, which is concerning. The threat to their employees is not something companies are used to, so it’s affecting how they’re speaking up.”

Arsuaga said recent attacks on Chick-fil-A and its head of DE&I show the issue isn’t just limited to LGBTQ+ issues, and that marketers need to show a united front. Chick-fil-A's DE&I statement on its website predated the Bud Light controversy or any recent criticism the restaurant chain received over the issue.

“I think it’s difficult for a lot of companies to stand individually because of fear of retribution,” Arsuaga said. “I think there’s an opportunity for companies to stand together in unity.”

She said she would like to see a coalition that includes such groups as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, NAACP and Hispanic organizations stating that “there’s no such thing as selective inclusivity.”

She added, “It’s going to be easier if we as an advertising and marketing organization and industry come together and say enough is enough to these minority groups with loud voices who are now trying to put a stop to the way we do business.”

More corporate caution ahead?

But the reality may be far different as companies survey the damage, particularly to Bud Light and parent company AB InBev.

“Marketers are going to have to steel themselves for a very political time,” said one senior public relations agency executive, who spoke on background. “Smart marketers are going to establish some guardrails that keep them out of politics.”

That may include reining in marketers from making statements that can be dredged up later, such as Heinerscheid’s reference to Bud Light’s history of “fratty humor” on a relatively obscure podcast. 

Attacks and scrutiny on individual marketers aren’t limited to right-on-left action. When former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino was named CEO of Twitter last month, critics on the left and right rooted through her Twitter account to note such things as her following Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or her past activity at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Greenpeace and other environmental activists at Cannes last year confronted Shell Brands International CEO Dean Aragón during and after a small panel discussion at The Female Quotient’s Equality Lounge, according to people familiar with the matter.

Tale of two beer campaigns

But not all blowback is created equal, and that explains why things have gone worse for AB InBev executives. While executives from both AB InBev and Molson Coors have faced individual backlash regarding marketing efforts, the actual impact on the brands and how they handled it is quite different.

Bud Light has faced major sales declines, down 26% the week ended May 20, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights citing NielsenIQ data via Bump Williams Consulting. Other AB InBev brands have suffered, with Budweiser down 11%. In the month of May, Bud Light was surpassed as the nation’s top-selling beer by Modelo Especial.

AB InBev shares have declined 15% since the controversy started in April; the company had shed more than $17 billion in market capitalization as of June 14. 

AB InBev CEO Michel Doukeris has downplayed the association with Mulvaney and said it was never part of a “campaign.”

Facing blowback from supporters of Mulvaney and LGBTQ+ rights, Bud Light did establish a $200,000 fund for small businesses headed by LGBTQ+ people, but it doesn’t appear to have quelled the criticism. AB InBev executives including U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Benoit Garbe and Global CMO Marcel Marcondes face an uncertain reception at best as the company prepares to accept Marketer of the Year honors at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next week.

Read more: AB InBev is Cannes Marketer of the Year

The personal attacks against Molson Coors were aimed at Chief Marketing Officer Sofia Colucci. In early May critics resurfaced a video the brand released some two months earlier called  “Bad S#!t to Good S#!t” that highlighted the history of sexism in beer ads and promised to turn any memorabilia from old sexist ads into compost to help female brewers grow hops. 

The conservative Daily Caller scoured Colucci’s social media accounts in search of anything remotely political, including support for COVID vaccines. She later took down her social media accounts, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But Miller Lite’s sales were actually up 18% in the week ended May 20, continuing to be buoyed by defectors from Bud Light, it appears. And Molson Coors stood squarely behind the video and its employees.

“This video was about two things: worm poop and saying women shouldn’t be forced to mud wrestle in order to sell beer,” said a Molson Coors spokeswoman in a statement issued in May as the controversy gained traction. “Neither of these things should be remotely controversial, and we hope beer drinkers can appreciate the humor (and ridiculousness) of this video from back in March.”

Adam Collins, the company’s chief communications and corporate affairs officer, also stood behind the marketers in a statement: “People can take issue with our ads or our brands, but we won’t stand by as people personally attack our employees—especially given that these are company decisions and are never made by one single person.”

Colucci declined an interview request made by Ad Age to Molson Coors.

Bud Light an outlier

Other marketers facing boycotts of late haven’t backed down (including The North Face) or in some cases just refused to acknowledge criticism. L’Oréal USA’s Maybelline is a prime example of the latter, facing a boycott reported by The Daily Mail, Fox News and CBS, but refusing to respond to repeated queries about it from Ad Age or those outlets. 

No Maybelline marketer got doxed. And the brand’s sales were up 3% for the four weeks ended May 21, according to IRI data from Evercore ISI, actually accelerating slightly as the period went on. That’s slower than the 11% growth for the year-ago period, but a similar trend to almost all color cosmetics.

Realistically, marketers at companies other than AB InBev haven’t faced the same pressure—or potential career impact—because their brands didn’t take the same kind of hit and their consumers largely didn’t appear to care. Therein lie some lessons for marketers, according to some in the industry.

Whether individual marketers getting called out in social media will have a chilling effect “really depends,” said Andy England, CEO of Phillips Distilling and former CMO of MillerCoors.

“The larger the brand is, the broader the household penetration, the larger the net revenue and profitability, the more risk you’re taking if you make a significant change,” he said. “That can be breathtaking because it’s hard to grow big CPG brands today.”