As the broader beer industry continues to grapple with the fallout from an outpouring of stories of sexual harassment and misogyny, one of the largest beer makers in the U.S. has entered 2022 with a series of sexually suggestive tweets as part of an anti-Dry January campaign.
The Twitter account for Pabst Brewing Company’s flagship Pabst Blue Ribbon brand (@PabstBlueRibbon) garnered attention Monday morning with a tweet that read “Not drinking this January? Try eating ass!” The tweet went out to the account’s 95,400 followers and received thousands of likes (5,691), retweets (2,085) and quotes (2,483) before it was deleted.
Pabst’s official response to the message was not that its account was hacked but that the tweet — and several replies — were sent in “poor judgment” by a rogue associate.
“We apologize about the language and content of our recent tweets,” Nick Reely, Pabst’s VP of marketing, said in a statement to media outlets. “The tweets in question were written in poor judgment by one of our associates. In no way does the content of these tweets reflect the values of Pabst and our associates. We’re handling the matter internally and have removed the tweets from our social platforms.”
Although the company backed away from the original tweet, dozens of suggestive replies remained unpurged throughout the brand’s feed for several hours. The company later deleted several additional replies.
Pabst declined to respond to follow-up questions about safeguards the company would enact for the account. The tweet drew media attention from Mediaite (as the “media loser” of the day and “super cringe”), AdAge and the New York Post.
The tweet was part of the company’s “Wet January” campaign aimed at dissuading consumers from taking part in the annual abstinence from consuming alcoholic beverages during the first month of the new year. References to that campaign have since been deleted from the company’s social media accounts.
Pabst’s Wet January campaign started a month into former Anheuser-Busch InBev marketing exec Paul Chibe’s tenure as CEO of the San Antonio-based beer maker.
Chibe succeeded Eugene Kashper, who acquired Pabst with TSG Consumer Partners in 2014, at the helm of the company. Kashper remains Pabst’s chairman of the board of directors.
Year-to-date through November 28, off-premise dollar sales of Pabst’s portfolio of offerings have declined 9.8%, to around $454 million in multi-outlet and convenience stores tracked by market research firm IRI. Although sales were down from 2020 levels ($497.5 million through the same time frame), they were close to the $458 million in off-premise sales in 2019.