Sen. Cruz Slams Anheuser-Busch For Stonewalling Senate Probe into Bud Light's Marketing to Children

Letter

Dear Mr. Doukeris:

I am writing to alert you to your subsidiary Anheuser-Busch's failure to comply with an
investigation by the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
("Commerce Committee" or "the Committee") regarding marketing alcohol to children and to
request that you direct Anheuser-Busch to cooperate with the investigation.

On May 17, I wrote to Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth requesting documents and
information regarding alarming allegations that Anheuser-Busch was marketing beer to minors
through its partnership with social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.1 In response to my letter and
at my request, the Code Compliance Review Board ("CCRB" or "the Board") of the Beer Institute,
an industry-funded lobbyist group representing U.S. brewers, also initiated a review of AnheuserBusch's compliance with the beer industry's self-imposed Advertising and Marketing Code
("Code").2 A dissenting opinion in the CCRB review by retired Judge Paul Summers, the only
attorney on the Board, corroborated my concerns.3 In his opinion, Judge Summers explained
"Mulvaney appeals to persons below the legal drinking age with a "special attractiveness' . . . is
especially attractive to young teens and girls; is often recognized as preadolescent; and caters to
very young people."4 Judge Summers concluded Anheuser-Busch "knew all this, or the company's

1 A copy of the May 17, 2023, letter is attached as Exhibit A. The purchase or possession of alcohol by anyone under 21 is illegal throughout the U.S. and many states also prohibit the marketing of alcohol to children. Alcohol Policy Information System: State Profiles of Underage Drinking Laws, NAT'L INST. ON ALCOHOL ABUSE & PREVENTION (last visited Aug. 15, 2023), https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/underage-drinking/state-profiles; see, e.g., Ala. Admin. Code
r. 20-X-7-.01(h) ("No advertisement shall include anything which might appeal to minors by implying that the consumption of alcoholic beverages is fashionable or the accepted course of behavior."); 3 Va. Admin. Code § 5-20-10(D)(1) ("No advertising shall contain any statement, symbol, depiction or reference that [w]ould tend to induce minors to drink, or would tend to induce persons to consume to excess.").
2 See Beer Institute Code Compliance Review Board, Dylan Mulvaney Complaint (July 18, 2023),
https://www.beerinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CCRB-Dylan-Mulvaney-Complaint-Packet-with-Decisions7.18.23.pdf.
3 Id. at 70--74.
4 Id. at 74.

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leadership should have known," and found that Anheuser-Busch "violated the Code as to
advertising and marketing to people below the legal drinking age."5

Meanwhile, nearly three months have passed since I requested documents from Mr.
Whitworth in my capacity as Ranking Member of the Commerce Committee, and Anheuser-Busch
has yet to provide the Committee with a single document. Anheuser-Busch's failure to cooperate
and blatant disregard for U.S. congressional oversight is unacceptable. Given your broader
responsibility for the Anheuser-Busch InBev portfolio of more than 500 brands, I trust you share
my sincere concern with the possibility that Anheuser-Busch is marketing alcohol to children6 and
will direct Anheuser-Busch to cooperate immediately with the Commerce Committee's
investigation. The level of cooperation the Committee receives will bear significantly on my
assessment of whether this is part of a broader problem across the Anheuser-Busch InBev product
line and whether changes to federal law are necessary to prohibit Anheuser-Busch InBev from
marketing beer to children.

The Need for Clear Advertising Guidelines in the Digital Sphere

My May 17th requests were designed to obtain pertinent information about how Bud Light
selects marketing partners and applies beer industry guidelines in the context of social media. There
are currently no federal laws against advertising alcohol to minors, in part because of the beer
industry's professed commitment to self-regulation. As Ranking Member on the Commerce
Committee, it is my duty to ensure that the Beer Institute's private regulatory regime is working; if
it is not, then our Committee may be forced to consider legislating to protect consumers, including
impressionable children. Congress cannot effectively weigh the costs and benefits of legislation
unless it understands how brewers are adapting to the digital sphere. Anheuser-Busch's response to
my request is thus key to the Committee's consideration of such potential legislation.

It is concerning, for example, that brewers do not prescreen branded content by social media
influencers. According to your company, "[s]uch marketing is unique in that both the content and
the platform are not controlled by the brewer; rather, influencers develop their own content and post
it on their own page on an agreed-upon platform."7 In other words, Anheuser-Busch claims
Mulvaney alone was responsible for the content of the February 11th and April 1st posts on behalf of
Bud Light.8 Yet, as Judge Summers observed, "If a company sends a social media influencer a beer
with his / her picture on the can, one can expect that the recipient will act on it. That is common
sense."9

5 Id.
6 See id. ("Mulvaney appeals to little children").
7 Response of Anheuser-Busch Companies to Senator Ted Cruz's June 14, 2023 CCRB Complaint, 4 (July 7, 2023), https://www.beerinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CCRB-Dylan-Mulvaney-Complaint-Packet-with-Decisions7.18.23.pdf [hereinafter AB Response].
8 This cannot be the full truth given that Anheuser-Busch apparently asked influencers to "assist it in promoting the Bud Light "Hold' Super Bowl ad" and "Mulvaney was provided specific instructions" regarding posting on Instagram. See id. at 4, 7.
9 Dylan Mulvaney Complaint, supra note 2 at 74.

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Anheuser-Busch's Initial Response

Based on those concerns, I sought documents from Anheuser-Busch to better understand
how industry guidelines were applied to Bud Light's decision to partner with Mulvaney. I hoped
these documents would shed light on how Anheuser-Busch "vets its partnerships," especially when
"selecting online influencers for its marketing efforts."10 Thus my aim differs from that of the
CCRB, whose "sole mission . . . is to examine the marketing/advertising materials that are the
subject of a complaint," not to examine the selection process itself or the suitability of Code
provisions.11

My May 17th letter was initially met with a roughly page-long unsigned response from
Anheuser-Busch failing to provide any documents. In subsequent communications with the
Committee, counsel to Anheuser-Busch refused to provide any documents, citing the then-ongoing
CCRB review.12 This is nonsensical. A review conducted by an industry trade association is not a
substitute for congressional oversight. The CCRB's review was limited in scope--the CCRB does
not "investigate marketing partnerships"13 and did not demand supporting evidence from AnheuserBusch. As CCRB Member Judge Summers observed, Anheuser-Busch "failed to provide the
reasonable documentation" requested in my letter and complaint, even though I had issued
"reasonable requests" and responses from Anheuser-Busch would have been "elucidating."14

Anheuser-Busch's Latest Response

Moreover, even now that the CCRB has completed its review, Anheuser-Busch persists in
refusing to provide the requested documents,15 revealing plainly that the ongoing CCRB review was
never the real reason for Anheuser-Busch's refusal to cooperate. Anheuser-Busch is now suggesting
that CCRB review was sufficient, and that it need not cooperate with congressional document
requests. This position is untenable; Anheuser-Busch does not decide whether and when a
congressional investigation is concluded.

This position is also troubling given the factual inaccuracies in the CCRB majority opinion.
The Board left lingering questions about the marketing partnership with Mulvaney and advanced a
misleading narrative about the audience data reviewed by the brewer. We still do not know, for
example, exactly when Bud Light hired Mulvaney. The CCRB majority's opinion also includes
numerous inaccuracies material to its decision.16 For example, the Board was under the bewildering

10 Exhibit A at 1.
11 Dylan Mulvaney Complaint, supra note 2 at 65. Although the Committee's purpose in obtaining this information does in fact differ from the CCRB's functions, that the CCRB review was ongoing could never have been a valid basis for refusing to comply. The U.S. Supreme Court has never articulated a restriction on congressional oversight based on collateral adjudication of the same matter by a private entity such as the CCRB.
12 See, e.g., Email from Counsel for Anheuser-Busch to Committee Staff (June 17, 2023) (on file with the Committee).
13 Dylan Mulvaney Complaint, supra note 2 at 67.
14 Id. at 74.
15 Email from Counsel for Anheuser-Busch to Committee Staff (July 24, 2023) (on file with the Committee).
16 See Dylan Mulvaney Complaint, supra note 2 at 67 ("While the CCRB has addressed a number of issues in our report, we want to make two points crystal clear that when taken together make it impossible to conclude that Anheuser-Busch violated the Code.")

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misapprehension that Anheuser-Busch "hired"17 CreatorIQ to prepare an "audience composition
study"18 and that CreatorIQ "determined that 80.35 percent of Mulvaney's Instagram audience was
21 years of age or older."19 The truth is that Anheuser-Busch itself extracted Mulvaney's Instagram
age ranges from existing Instagram data reposited on the CreatorIQ platform and then itself applied
what it calls the "standard methodology"20 to guess what percent of the 18--24 category was above
the legal drinking age. CreatorIQ had no role, whatsoever, in assessing Mulvaney's audience
demographics prior to the placement of the Bud Light ads, a fact CreatorIQ confirmed to the
Committee.21 It simply re-presented audience data that was already available to Mulvaney through
Instagram.22

These dilatory tactics by your subsidiary must end. Otherwise, Anheuser-Busch InBev will
leave Congress no choice but to infer this obstructionism is intended to shield inculpatory
information from the Committee's investigation. Accordingly, I request you instruct AnheuserBusch to immediately comply with this investigation and May 17th document request and no later
than August 29, 2023.23

Source