Dylan Mulvaney took to the stage at South by Southwest on Sunday to call on brands to “step up” and put protections in place for diverse talent — nearly one year after her tie-up with Bud Light triggered an onslaught of bullying and transphobia.
Right-wing activists harassed Mulvaney online and galvanized a boycott of Bud Light after the trans influencer posted a video of herself in April 2023 promoting a contest for the beer brand on Instagram.
In response, the CEO of Bud Light parent Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), Michel Doukeris, distanced the company from its collaboration with Mulvaney, saying that the sponsored Instagram post wasn’t a fully fledged ad campaign.
In June, Mulvaney said in a video that a “certain brand” never reached out to her in the aftermath of the backlash and amid the threats of violence she had received.
Speaking about the event during a panel on Sunday which tackled the role of brands and media in fighting hate, Mulvaney said she “didn’t know about cybersecurity” or how to protect herself from the attacks, citing this as a critical area that is often overlooked when brands strike creator partnerships.
“I think when a brand hires diverse talent, but specifically content creators, we don’t have some of the same resources that big talent might have or safety measures in place,” she said.
“There’s a responsibility that needs to be taken by the brand, even before an advertising [sic] goes out, that there will be protection and support. Because otherwise, it’s putting a lot of potentially marginalized groups and creators in a really sticky situation,” she added.
She called for brands to spend time “getting to know a talent” to build a level of trust and agree on a communication plan in the event of backlash.
“I never thought that writing into a legal contract it would need to say, ‘in the case of a boycott this will happen.’ But that’s where we’re at right now,” she said.
Bud Light’s handling of its partnership with Mulvaney alienated both sides of the political aisle and caused sales at AB InBev to plummet. The brand’s U.S. CMO Benoit Garbe stepped down at the end of last year.
“Companies have to stop rewarding the wrong behavior,” said Aaron Walton, CEO of advertising agency Walton Isaacson, who was speaking on the panel with Mulvaney. “When you give into that fear and when you start to prioritize the negative hate versus the love and the community, you ultimately will lose. It’s not just the community you lose, you also lose the allies.”
Healing through humor
Mulvaney said she had an idea for “how to fix last year’s situation” with Bud Light as tensions began escalating. It involved a Western-style ad featuring a cowboy at one end of a bar and a trans person at the other and a beer in the center as typical duel music plays out. But the beer brand, which she never cited by name, never reached out amid the backlash.
“I think humor can be very healing and I think it can appeal to both sides,” she said. “I could have been so integral to the solutions.”
Part of the issue, Mulvaney said, is that the public can sometimes view content creators “as a character and not as a real human.”
She recalled going to a gala a few weeks ago when an older man at her table referred to her as “the trans beer girl.” Mulvaney, who comes from a comedy background, said she spent the event conversing with the man and making him laugh. He ended up asking for her contact details.
“I thought I was appealing to this Gen Z generation, but maybe it’s the older white men that I need to really go and talk to, sit down and have a conversation or a beer with,” she said.
“I love getting to meet real life humans because…I don’t want to be the enemy. I don’t want to be the villain. I’m really just a human being that wants things to be okay,” she added.
Treating creators as employees
Mulvaney said she more vigorously vets brands that want to work with her now. When entering a brand partnership, she thinks of herself “as an employee — and I want to be seen the same way.”
“I want to know who I’m actually working with, I want to know the people behind that company…I want to know how their queer employees are being treated and what ethics they have in place, where their dollars are going,” she said.
“I want to know that they have my back, because I think it’s so easy to jump into bed with someone and now I’m learning that there’s a lot of questions to ask first.”
Mulvaney is a bubbly, vivacious character who wants to see more trans joy reflected in Hollywood and marketing. At the end of the SXSW panel, she debuted a new single called “Days of Girlhood” based on her TikTok series of the same name, which chronicled her transition journey.
“So much of what I grew up watching was trans people facing violence in ‘Law and Order,’” she said. “Now I want to see trans joy.”
For brands, that means allowing diverse creators “to do their thing” rather than capitalizing on their diversity. Mulvaney was working with a food delivery company for an ad last year. She said she sent them a “really funny script.” They responded asking her to “talk a little bit about how hard your childhood was.”
“My identity is maybe like 5% of who I am as a person; there are so many other pieces of a creator or talent to capitalize on,” she said.
The Bud Light furor caused a “trickle down effect” with many brands taking a step back from supporting the LGBTQ+ community last year, leading to a “bleak” Pride month, Mulvaney said.
She hopes for a brighter Pride this year “at the very minimum,” as well as brands thinking about “what happens the month after.”
LGBTQ+-specific programming at SXSW dropped by 35% this year compared to last year, according to analysis from nonprofit Do the WeRQ.
Kate Wolff, co-chair of Do the WeRQ and founder and CEO of Lupine Creative, told Campaign US Bud Light’s behavior “created insecurities among everybody else.”
“[That insecurity] is permeating through everything, not just SXSW programming but in general how people are approaching Pride in June,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Campaign US.
