By Health & Wellness, Policy/Legislation, Youth January 13, 2026
In April 2023, transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney was featured in a series of advertisements and promotional content for Bud Light beer.
Anti-transgender backlash over the marketing partnership played out inside liquor stores and grocery chains across the country. Americans trashed displays featuring Mulvaney, destroyed merchandise and tanked U.S. sales by parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) by more than 10% in matter of weeks.
In June – as discourse around Mulvaney reached a fever pitch – Ohio State University (OSU) College of Public Health research administrator Alysha Ennis began documenting alcohol advertisements and marketing campaigns across Columbus that specifically target LGBTQ+ Ohioans.
“It was just an interesting time to be doing that work,” Ennis said. “We even had some students asking ‘Is this advertising supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?’”
Ennis – who works under behavioral scientist Dr. Joanne Patterson at OSU’s Practice & Science LGBTQ+ Health Equity Lab – said the answer is complicated:
LGBTQ+ people experience negative health outcomes related to alcohol at far higher rates than their non-LGBTQ+ peers. Targeted alcohol marketing like Bud Light’s partnership with Mulvaney could be making it worse.
“We want to support [LGBTQ+ representation], but at the same time, we’re considering alcohol marketing that targets the LGBTQ+ community a bad thing,” Ennis said. “Because it’s associating a justice [movement] with a product that could be hurtful to the same community it says it’s celebrating.”
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