Budweiser cut through the chaff during the Super Bowl ads with an ad so simple, so obviously American and Budweiser, that viewers knew whom the ad was for and where it was going, and all they had to do was sit back and drink it in. Budweiser’s beloved Clydesdales nurse a mangy young bird back to health and help it take flight. It isn’t until the scene in which our hero horse leaps that the mature bird’s wings spread and the beer pegasus is revealed to be a bald eagle launching from the draft horse’s back . . . all while Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” shreds in the background.
It was the one commercial that managed to communicate what it was, provoke an emotion, and get out without eye-rolling snark or a one-liner. The King of Beers still knows what its subjects like: “Free Bird,” good buddies, and beer.