Budweiser's Super Bowl 2022 Commercial Will Leave You In Tears

While there have been many memorable commercials during the Super Bowl in the past few decades, Budweiser commercials have especially captured the attention (and the hearts) of viewers. Since 1986, Budweiser has used Clydesdales in their commercials. The most famous of these commercials appeared in 1996, when two teams of horses were shown playing football, and in 2001, when a team of Clydesdales bowed down to the Manhattan skyline just after the September 11 terrorist attacks, per Jacksonville.com.

Though Budweiser's Clydesdales commercials have become a fixture during the Super Bowl in the past few decades, last year, Anheuser-Busch, the company behind Budweiser, decided not to air a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl in 2021. Instead, Budweiser released a 90-second advertisement before the Super Bowl in January 2021, in which the company explained why they wouldn't be releasing a commercial to air during the Super Bowl. "For the first time in 37 years, Budweiser isn't airing a commercial during the Super Bowl. Instead, we're redirecting our advertising dollars to support COVID-19 vaccines awareness and education," the video's description read, according to Good Housekeeping. "Like everyone else, we are eager to get people back together, reopen restaurants and bars, and be able to gather to cheers with friends and family," Budweiser vice president of marketing, Monica Rustgi, also said in a statement, per Good Housekeeping. "To do this, and to bring consumers back into neighborhood bars and restaurants that were hit exceptionally hard by the pandemic, we're stepping in to support critical awareness of the COVID-19 vaccine."

After taking a brief break from the Super Bowl in 2021, the Budweiser Clydesdales will be making an appearance in a brand new commercial during this year's Super Bowl, set to take place on Sunday, February 13. In this year's Super Bowl commercial, entitled "A Clydesdale's Journey," a Clydesdale is seen getting injured while jumping over a barbed-wire fence. Then, the Clydesdale endures a long winter of recovery from its injury. Just when all hope seems lost, the Clydesdale appears to recover its confidence and charges through the barn door and out into the field, much to the surprise of the Clydesdale's furry friend, Budweiser's iconic golden retriever, as the New York Post reports. "This Super Bowl we have one message for America: In the home of the brave, down never means out," Budweiser captioned the commercial.

The one-minute commercial was directed by Chloé Zhao, who recently won an Oscar for "Nomadland." During an interview with USA Today Sports, Daniel Blake, Budweiser's vice president, spoke about the importance of this particular comeback story. "The Clydesdales are, for many people, a symbol of America, a symbol of hope, of strength, of resilience," Blake told USA Today Sports. "We felt they were the perfect metaphor to tell this broader story, this comeback story. For us to come back, with a symbol of America but also a story of injury, the road to recovery and ultimately, this triumph, I think is a really important message for the country to hear right now and one that really, only Budweiser can tell in this way."