While brands were forced to make the difficult choice between addressing or ignoring the pandemic in their Super Bowl ads, Bud Light split the difference. It aired one pandemic-free commercial, “Bud Light Legends,” and another, “Last Year’s Lemons,” which playfully tackled the coronavirus. 

The commercial focused on Bud Light Selzer Lemonade. At a backyard barbeque, a guest asks, “When did Bud Light start making lemonade?” to which another guest responds: “probably when 2020 handed us all those lemons.” The spot satirizes all the “lemons” 2020 handed the world by having the citrus fruit literally fall from the sky. Lemons knock down bikes, splatter on people’s faces, shatter ceilings, ruin weddings, and generally cause a more comical version of the very real chaos of 2020. In the end, the partygoers enjoy their hard lemonades, a future those watching the 2021 game could only hope would be on the horizon.  

​​The brand extended the analogy to gameday viewing, promising to give fans a chance to win a case of the new drink if they tweet “#LemonsIntoLemonade” and “#Sweepstakes” if there was a turnover by either team. 

The ad does not show any mask-wearing, despite the COVID references. When asked about that, a brand spokesman stated: “For our Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade spot, we created a fictional piece of content that is based in a future time, which captures the relatable moments in 2020 in a way that we hope brings levity to viewers after a lemon of a year.” 

Brand: Bud Light

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy

Quarter Aired: Q2

Super Bowl: LV

Year: 2021