Why It Might Be Time for Budweiser to Give That Horse and Dog a Rest

Super Bowl ads are a lot like the movie business: Executives tend to stick with characters that work. It’s why, for example, Freddy Krueger slashed his way through nine Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and Spider-Man’s got 11 of his own. Bruce Willis? The man’s been in at least 117 films. This same maxim probably also explains why, on Super Bowl Sunday, Budweiser trotted out not just its famous Clydesdale horses—living symbols of the company since the end of Prohibition—but their trusty canine companion, that adorable Labrador retriever. In case you missed it, Bud’s 60-second spot, created by VaynerMedia and directed by Chloé Zhao, was titled “A Clydesdale’s Journey.” It lived up to its billing. Cavorting around its expanse of open plain, one of the giant draught horses injures its leg while trying to leap over a fence and—against all odds, and with emotional support from the pooch—rises from his recuperative bed of hay and lives to gallop again. The slogan: “In the home of the brave, down never means out.” Bet on this horse It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in comparative literature to see the intended symbolism here. And just in case audiences didn’t pick up on it, Anheuser-Busch issued a release explaining that the spot “follows a Clydesdale fighting through setbacks and overcoming challenges, mirroring the character of the country.” So the horse was America. And the dog was, well, just his friend. How a Small Indie Agency Keeps Winning the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter Over and Over Again Budweiser has done a lot of this feel-good doggie-and-horsey stuff before, most memorably in 2014 and 2015, when its “Puppy Love” and “Lost Dog” spots, respectively, were among the biggest marketing touchdowns Bud ever had. In fact, so endearing was that material that, in 2016, Tivo ranked those two spots (which showed a dog and horse becoming friends in the first ad, and a horse helping the lost dog find its way home in the second) the two best Super Bowl ads of all time, beating out classics including Volkswagen’s “Star Wars” spot of 2011 and Coke’s Mean Joe Greene ad of 1979. On the surface, it’s not hard to see why. Not only are cute animals among the safest bets when appealing to a broad audience, but Budweiser’s ever-present patriotic subtext (the farm, the pickup truck, the windblown men of the prairie) always seemed like a solid bet to make during America’s biggest annual sporting event. The end of the reign? Except this year. Sure, the spot was reasonably popular, ranking 13% higher than the norm for alcoholic beverage ads, according to iSpot’s Ace Metrix data. “I thought that it was a good spot,” said Leslie Zane, CEO of brand consultancy Triggers. “I don’t think it was nearly as powerful as the man that trains the Clydesdale and becomes his best friend [“Brotherhood” in 2013]. That was the best Bud spot in history. But I think the connection between man and horse is a connection that every human being can relate to.” Super Bowl ads have gotten wildly more competitive and creative in the last few years. It takes more than puppies and horses.Shama Hyder, CEO, Zen Media But “A Clydesdale’s Journey” scored only a 5.9 on the USA Today Ad Meter and failed to crack the top 10 ads in the game. Indeed, Kia’s computer-generated Robo Dog easily beat out Bud’s real one. Data from Morning Consult was similar: only 56% of viewers had a positive response to Bud's spot. It would be going too far to call the ad a miss—but too generous to call it an unqualified hit. So if the essential ingredients (horse, dog, rancher dude) are the same, then what’s changed? Competition breeds better dogs For one thing, the Super Bowl of advertising is not the same game that it was eight years ago. Shama Hyder, CEO of marketing firm Zen Media, observed that back in the not-so-distant past, brands could rely on the “big reveal” of debuting their ads during the game, whereas these days earned media notched prior to game day is the real return on investment. What’s more, just as advertisers spend more money to get into the game each year, the creative game has increased commensurately. “The problem [with “A Clydesdale’s Journey”] was less the theme and more the storytelling and lack of creativity,” Hyder said. “Super Bowl ads have gotten wildly more competitive and creative in the last few years. It takes more than puppies and horses.” But there’s another force at work here, and part of the difficulty in understanding it lays with many audiences simply not being able to see it. Veteran marketer Larry Adams runs the AI-driven data platform X_Stereotype. According to his figures, “A Clydesdale’s Journey” was among the lowest performing ads of the game when it came to what Adams terms “multicultural sentiment.” HP Envisions a Remote Working Utopia Where People Can Log In From Horseback A multicultural reevaluation The theme of America getting up after being dealt a blow, Adams said, inevitably reminded many viewers of the pandemic. But not everyone sees the pandemic in terms of inevitable triumph: For viewers of color, the topic is likely to be far weightier and less easily resolved. In 2020, for example, Black Americans were hospitalized for Covid at a rate nearly five times that of whites, according to data from the Mayo Clinic. “We’ve been going through so much trauma. So many people have died,” Adams said. The injured horse, he said, “just reflected that through a really dark lens. It was almost relishing in the trauma.” But Adams said there’s also a problem with the ad’s patriotic trappings on their own—even if conveyed through actors as seemingly innocuous as a dog and a horse. Old tropes die hard It’s not that Americans of color are not patriotic or don’t love animals, it’s that many never identified with these symbols in the first place—in large part, Adams argues, because the executives and creatives who presumed their mainstream appeal weren’t looking past their own demographic norms. “Mainstream, from my point of view, was always white male—it was coded white male language,” Adams said. “So the Clydesdales, I think, are full representation of that white male persona.” In the post-George-Floyd era, when brands are paying more attention to diversity in both their own ranks and their customer base, he argues it’s time to rethink the symbolism—especially if, as in the case of the Clydesdales, it’s been used since 1933. “These old tropes, these old metaphors, these things that were appropriate at the time are now perceived through different lenses,” Adams said. “Marketers will have to innovate in order to stay relevant, and also find new ways to contextual emotional connections. This drawing upon the past isn't a certain win.” Why Marketers Might Never Move Past ’90s Nostalgia