Super Bowl Ad Sitouts

January 26, 2021

An interesting twist on this year’s Super Bowl ad lineup: no Budweiser or corresponding Clydesdale horses this year. For the first time since 1983.

Brian Steinberg, for Variety:

Beverage giant Anheuser-Busch InBev is benching Super Bowl commercials from Budweiser, perhaps its best-known product — the first time in nearly four decades that the brand won’t have a place on the Big Game ad roster. The move follows decisions by both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo to sideline Super Bowl ads for their flagship products, and suggests CBS’ broadcast of Super Bowl LV will lack some of the event’s most familiar trappings as the world continues to grapple with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

Budweiser will give the money it might have spent on running a Super Bowl commercial to the Ad Council, an industry coalition that produces and places public-service announcements, to help raise awareness of the benefits of getting the coronavirus vaccine.