Heineken CEO on Bud Light marketing fiasco: “You need to stand up for your values”

The Netherlands | The first CEO to weigh in on rival Anheuser-Busch’s US marketing fiasco, is Heineken. Its CEO, Dolf van den Brink, said that Heineken has learned lessons from the social media controversy around a Bud Light campaign - but still believes businesses should stand up for their “values.”

“Particularly in the Western world, we do see a lot of polarisation in society. And that’s affecting all players, all actors in society, also businesses and also brands,” Mr van den Brink told CNBC, a news channel, on 31 July.

“You have to be thoughtful; you have to be balanced. And at the same time, you need to stand [up] for your values and your principles. And we try to do that to the best of our abilities,” he said. “So far, I’m proud of how our brand teams across our operating companies are navigating this new world.”

Mr van den Brink was speaking to CNBC, after Heineken cut its 2023 profit growth forecast. For the first half of 2023, the brewer reported a 5.6 percent decline in beer sales, to 120 million hl and an 8.8 percent fall in operating profit compared to the same period last year.

“We always knew the first half of the year would all be about the inflationary pressures on our input costs, particularly in Europe, which is an important region to us,” Mr van den Brink commented.

“We front-loaded the year with pricing [up 13 percent]; as such we expected some volume softness in the beginning of the year. Overall, we are quite happy with our strong revenue growth, we grew revenue between 9 percent and 10 percent in three out of four regions.”

Some analysts beg to differ. They called the unprecedented price hike at the beginning of the year a “misstep”. Following Heineken’s revised profit forecast, queasy investors wiped over USD 4 billion off the company’s market value, per Reuters.