People forget that the most successful gay boycott ever organized was against Coors. In the 60's and 70's Coors may have been only the fourth most popular beer but it was only sold in 11 states and it was the number one beer in 10 of those states. Coors was incredibly profitable and spent almost no money on advertising because of its reputation. (If you've never seen Smokey and the Bandit the plot revolves around smuggling Coors back East.) The Coors family was fairly dominant in Colorado and Denver politics during this time and very, very conservative. Joe Coors in particular became something of an ultraconservative zealot after this brother was famously murdered. He sat on the Univ of Colo board of regents and demanded violent crackdowns of peaceful protests on campus. He singlehanded refused students to form any Hispanic or LGBT groups on campus. To get a job at Coors (a top employer at the time) you had to pass a polygraph test to assure Coors you were not gay. When Coors started busting the unions in '70s, Unions, Hispanic civil rights groups, and Gay civil rights groups led by Harvey Milk bannded together to boycott Coors.
To this day, you cannot buy a Coors in any gay bar in San Francisco and even in Denver, the beer is unpopular with gays and hispanics.
The strikers never got back in at Coors but over 10 years, Coors lost about half of its marketshare and was forced to go national, totally changing the beer's character and quality. Several members of the family ran for Governor, House of Representatives, and Senate but by then their local reputation with the working class had rather soured. Coors is essentially the money behind the Heritage Foundation and a major funder of Focus on the Family. They were the major funders of Ammendment 2 which permitted prevented any Colorado government (county, city) from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action protecting LGBTQ people. The Supreme Court rejected the law as unconstitutional in 1996- stating for the first time that LGBTQ were citizens deserving of equal protection under the law.
