Bud Light debuts a fruity new flavor in a desperate effort to win over women
- Bud Light debuted a new beer on Monday: Bud Light Orange.
- The beer giant hopes to win over women with fruity, flavored beers, according to executives.
- Female drinkers are increasingly crucial to beer sales as beer falls out of fashion in favor of wine and spirits.
Bud Light has a new tactic to win over female drinkers: lighter, fruitier beers.
On Monday, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced the national debut of Bud Light Orange, a citrusy lager made with orange peels. The company also announced the return of a "refreshed" Bud Light Lime for summer 2018.
"Our millennial consumers are eager to try new, flavored options in the light lager category. We wanted to create something new to engage with these consumers and bring them into the Bud Light family," Andy Goeler, Bud Light's vice president of marketing, said in a statement.
"Flavored beer has seen steady growth with consumers continually looking for higher quality beverages made with real, natural flavors," the statement continued.
While younger drinkers have gravitated towards flavored beers (and away from beer in general, in favor of wine and spirits), the company additionally hopes to win over another group with Bud Light Orange: women.
Women, as a whole, drink less than men, and they tend to prefer wine and spirits over beer when they do drink. Historically, major beer companies have ignored this problem and advertised primarily to men.
However, with women catching up with men in terms of their share of the alcoholic market, and men expanding their alcoholic preferences beyond beer, beer giants are growing concerned.
Beer penetration fell one percentage point in the US market from 2016 to 2017, while both wine and spirits were unmoved, according to Nielsen data. Beer already lost 10% of market share to wine and hard liquor from 2006 to 2016.
As some of the biggest names in beer struggle, AB InBev is trying to win over women with lighter lagers (such as Corona) and flavored beers.
"Flavored beer provides an option for mixed gender occasions, as well as entering new occasions that have historically been owned by other alcohol beverage categories," AB InBev CEO Carlos Brito said in a call with investors in March.
This isn't AB InBev's first attempt at growing its sales among female drinkers. Last year, the company relaunched Lime-A-Ritas - previously a Bud Light spin-off - as the company's first brand marketed exclusively to women.