For Super Bowl mainstay Budweiser’s ad this year, the beer brand played it politically safe, juxtaposing negative stereotypes about Americans with footage showing just how extraordinary Americans can be.
The uplifting 60-second spot for “the Great American Beer” was created by David Miami and directed by “The Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow. It ran in the Super Bowl’s fourth quarter and features a narrator subtly extolling the virtues of what it means to be an American.
“Typical American, showing off his strength,” the narrator says over a clip of a firefighter tackling a blaze. “Look at him, touching other peoples’ things,” he says as a man pushes a stranger’s stuck car through heavy snow. “Typical Americans, showing up uninvited,” he says while a soldier surprises his father at work after returning from a deployment.
“So next time someone labels you ‘typical,’” the narrator says, “show them what typical can do.”
Super Bowl LIV marked the second time in three years where Bud’s Clydesdale horses, long a staple of the Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned brand’s ads, were absent from its main commercial. This year’s ad “was all about the people,” Monica Rustgi, Budweiser’s VP of marketing, told Ad Age.
BRAND: Budweiser
AGENCY: David Miami
QUARTER AIRED: Q4
SUPER BOWL: LIV
YEAR: 2020