Bud Light served as official sponsor at Toronto Pride parade

Bud Light served as official sponsor at Toronto Pride parade – where wild footage shows naked men marching and dancing in front of children and families along parade route

• Bud Light served as an official sponsor of the Toronto Pride parade on Sunday
• The annual event featured scantily-clad performers dancing on a Bud Light stage and a group of nudists walking through the streets 
• Bud Light is continuing to reel from the effects of its disastrous marketing campaign with Dylan Mulvaney, with sales continuing to plummet 

Embattled beer company Bud Light served as an official sponsor of the Toronto Pride parade on Sunday, when naked men marched in the street.

The annual event featured a float, adorned with Bud Light signs, on which girls in shorts and colorful Bud Light shirts were dancing to some music.

It also saw a group of nudists walking through the streets and scantily-clad performers dancing on a Bud Light stage.

The decision to sponsor the event comes just weeks after the company apparently sponsored an ‘all-ages Pride event’ in Arizona.

But the company is still seeing its profits tumble, with sales plummeting another 27 percent for the week ending June 10 as it continues to face backlash for a controversial partnership featuring trans TikToker Dylan Mulvaney.

Bud Light served as the official sponsor of the Toronto Pride Parade on Sunday

It sponsored a stage where a group of scantily-clad performers wearing stockings over their heads performed

Videos posted online showed a group of nudists walk through the streets at the Pride parade

Footage captured by The Post Millennial’s Beth Basich from Sunday’s Pride Parade showed dozens of attendees marching in the streets in full view of children who went to the festival with their families.

One carried a sign saying, ‘Life is short: Play Naked’ and ‘Be bare, be bold’ as the crowd cheered them on.

Another of the naked marchers held up a sign saying: ‘Proudly celebrating my diversity.’ 

Other footage showed a stage, clearly adorned with Bud Light branding, featuring  scantily-clad dancers wearing fishnets, nipple stickers and nylons over their face with cartoon-like eyes drawn onto it.

On its website, Bud Light Canada affirms it ‘has been a proud partner of Pride Toronto for the last 10 years,’ and says: ‘This year, we’re commemorating this milestone with Pride Toronto by featuring them on our can design, as well as continuing as the official beer sponsor of the festival.’ 

It also says it provides $100,000 to various organizations that support the LGBTQIA+ community across Canada and has created a range of Bud Light beer cans to commemorate the partnership.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, for comment. 

Bud Light also sponsored a float at the parade, as it celebrated its 10 year partnership with Pride Toronto

The company also provides $100,000 to various organizations that support the LGBTQIA+ community across Canada

Bud Light signs were clearly visible on the stage where the dancers were performing

The risque Pride parade came just weeks after Bud Light apparently co-sponsored an ‘all-ages Pride event’ in Flagstaff, Arizona

The beer company was listed as a sponsor on a poster for the Pride in the Pines event on June 17, but after it received criticism on Twitter, Flagstaff Pride recalled the poster and posted a new one eliminating any mention of Bud Light, saying: ‘We put out an incorrect promotional poster, which included Bud Light as a sponsor.’

Earlier this month, Bud Light was listed as the sponsor of a ‘family-friendly’ Pride event with drag queens in Flagstaff, Arizona

Bud Light executives also denied that they were sponsoring the event, which featured drag queens but was listed as a ‘family festival event’ and a ‘safe space’ for all visitors.

But Bud Light was still listed among the sponsors on the organization’s website, and a poster for the Pride in the Pines festival on the site said it was ‘presented by Bud Light.’

The company, though, is continuing to reel from its ad campaign with Dylan Mulvaney, who posted a video announcing she was partnering with Bud Light in early April.

In the controversial promotion, Mulvaney, 26, posted a video on April 1 of herself cracking open a Bud Light on her Instagram page.

She showed off the customized can with her face on it – one of many corporate freebies she gets and promotes to her millions of followers.

Bud Light was accused of alienating their traditional customer base by partnering with Mulvaney, which led many conservatives – including Kid Rock – to boycott the brand.

Conservatives have continued with the boycott, leading to the Belgian based brewer to place two executives responsible for partnership— Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing, and her boss, Daniel Blake — on leave in April.

After Anheuser-Busch tried to distance itself from the Mulvaney promotion, Bud Light also faced backlash from the opposite direction, with pro-LGBTQ groups accusing the company of abandoning the transgender influencer. 

The beer giant is continuing to reel from the effects of its disastrous ad campaign featuring trans TikToker Dylan Mulvaney

Bud Light commemorated her first full year as a transgender woman with a beer can featuring her face. It has also apparently created Pride beer cans for the Toronto festival

Ever since that disastrous ad campaign, the beer giant lost its crown as America’s bestselling beer to Modelo, a Mexican lager brewed by Grupo Modelo – which is also owned by Bud manufacturer Anheuser-Busch.

Bud Light’s sales dropped 26.8 percent for the week ending June 10, the worst week-on-week performance since its early April advertising campaign.

It’s a deeper drop from the week ending on June 3, which saw a 24.4 percent drop, according to Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ. The new low beats the previous worst – an almost 26 percent drop – for the week ending May 25.

Anheuser-Busch’s other US brands – including Budweiser, Michelob Ultra and Natural Light – have also seen a significant decline in sales since the controversy. Bud is down 10 percent, while Natty Light and Michelob are down 2.3 and 2.4 percent, respectively. 

‘This was a tough week for Bud Light and other beer brands,’ Bump Williams, owner of the consulting company, said. 

The once-popular beer company saw its worst week in sales, dropping 26.8 percent the week of June 10

Recently, Anheuser-Busch’s chief marketing officer said that the Bud Light partnership with Dylan Mulvaney was a humbling reminder it needs to understand its consumers better. 

Marcel Marcondes ironically made the comments while accepting an award for ‘Creative Marketer of the Year’ at Cannes Lions – a lavish industry conference in the south of France dubbed the ‘Oscars for the adverting industry.’

Though AB was named the winner of the award before the fiasco erupted, it was not officially awarded until Monday, meaning there was a mighty elephant in the room. Some even said the company should turn down the award, the Wall Street Journal reported.

‘In times like this, when things get divisive and controversial so easily, I think it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers first of all to be very humble,’ he said.

‘That’s what we’re doing, being very humble, and really reminding ourselves of what we should do best every day, which is to really understand our consumers.

‘Which is to really celebrate and appreciate every consumer that loves our brands – but in a way that can make them be together, not apart.’

The session was described in programming notes as a talk in part about AB InBev’s ‘relentless focus on connecting with consumers in meaningful ways,’ The Wall Street Journal reported.

Marcondes has worked at AB InBev for nearly two decades, according to his LinkedIn profile, and now oversees its global marketing strategies of AB brands including Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob ULTRA, Stella Artois and others.

‘It’s tough to see the controversial and divisive debates that have been happening in the US in the last couple of weeks involving lots of brands and companies, including and especially Bud Light,’ Marcondes said during the presentation.

‘It’s tough exactly because what we do is all about bringing people together.’

‘That’s what Bud Light stands for – it exists to make beer easy to drink and easy to enjoy,’ he said.

‘That’s what we all, as a team, will be doing moving forward as a group. That’s what leaders do. Bud Light is coming back. It’s going all around the country, reconnecting with consumers, moving forward. That’s what you can expect from Bud Light in the US.’

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