When she was named Anheuser-Busch’s marketing vice president, Alissa Heinerscheid explained in a recent
podcast interview, “I had this super clear mandate: We need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand.” Doing that, she said, “means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive.”
But the limits of that mandate, and of how Anheuser-Busch defined “inclusive,” became apparent Friday, when the company announced that
Ms. Heinerscheid and her boss, Daniel Blake, were on a leave of absence after a wave of right-wing outrage over a Bud Light marketing campaign that involved the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.