After a difficult year filled with boycotts and falling sales, Bud Light is kicking off 2024 with a new character. He’s got a Bud Light branded jacket, metallic sunglasses and a mustache.
That’s according to USA Today AdMeter, which shared an exclusive teaser for the upcoming Bud Light Super Bowl commercial. In the short clip, a man in a Broncos jersey holding a Bud Light sees the character and asks “are you…?” with an awestruck look on his face.
Then, as the Bud Light logo appears on the screen, a voice can be heard saying “Let’s go!” loudly.
“It’s notable that the man holding the beer bottle is wearing a Broncos jersey with No. 18 on it, the same number Peyton Manning wore in Denver,” said USA Today. “Manning and fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith starred in a Bud Light campaign that ran towards the end of the 2023 football season.”
Manning and Smith could be seen Friday on the brand’s website, above a banner for a Super Bowl tickets contest. Despite a difficult 2023, Bud Light is still the official beer of the NFL, per a press release issued Wednesday.
As for the new character, Todd Allen, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, told USA TODAY in a statement that: “Bud Light’s long-standing partnership with the NFL is one of the most iconic relationships in sports, and we’re excited to be back on the Super Bowl stage this year to continue our long legacy of delivering iconic, breakthrough Super Bowl ads that rally fans year after year.”
Last year’s Super Bowl ad featured Miles Teller of “Top Gun: Maverick” and his wife Kaleigh.
“Bud Light, the popular beer that has for years used silly ads and sometimes frat-boyish humor to stand apart from the (six)pack, is getting ready to grow up,” said a report on the commercial published by Variety. It noted “a new degree of sophistication and — shudder! — a female as one of the central characters of its commercial.”
Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light said the brand was looking to “strip away all the loudness and the distractions,” per the Variety report.
Just a few months later, entertainer Kid Rock shot up cases of the beer. He had seen a short March Madness promotional video on social media featuring transgender actress Dylan Mulvaney.
“Grandpa is feeling a little frisky today. Let me say something to all you and be as clear and concise as possible,” Kid Rock said into the camera before firing a barrage of bullets into the beer. “F**k Bud Light and f**k Anheuser-Busch! Have a terrific day.”
This video was followed by boycotts and a significant sales tumble for the brand, leading it to lose its number one spot to Modelo Especial.
As of last August, NielsenIQ data provided to FOX Business by Bump Williams Consulting showed that off-premise location sales (including grocery store and gas station sales) of Bud Light were down 15.9% on a dollar basis and down 20.1% on a volume basis year to date as of Aug. 19, shortly after hundreds of employee were let go by Anheuser-Busch.
In November, Audacy reported that Chief Marketing Officer Benoit Garbe was resigning “at the end of the year in order to embark on a new chapter in his career,” Anheuser--Busch Chief Commercial Officer, Kyle Norrington would step in to oversee marketing.
“The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest moment, and our goal is to once again captivate our audience when the world is watching,” said Norrington this week. “We’re showing up big time in this moment that matters for our beer drinkers and football fans across the country through unmatched creative storytelling, seamless trade integrations, record-breaking consumer sweeps, robust media plans, and on-the-ground activations.”