Bud Bowl

Why it works

Anheuser-Busch turned Super Bowl XXIII, on January 22, 1989, into a game within the game. Two teams of longneck bottles in tiny helmets, Budweiser against Bud Light, fought through six 30-second stop-motion spots placed in the pregame show, at kickoff and at the end of each quarter, with Bob Costas and Paul Maguire calling the plays; Budweiser won 27–24. It is studied as an early model of serialized Super Bowl storytelling and as a lesson in buying an event rather than a slot. The brewer made itself the broadcast's only beer advertiser, an exclusivity it kept every year for three decades, and backed the spots with scorecards, a $100,000 prize contest and displays in 200,000 stores, giving retailers its own trademark to rival the official Super Bowl logo that Miller controlled. Executives later credited it with a 17 percent sales lift in a normally dead January. Created by D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles and animated by Broadcast Arts, it returned for seven more editions, through 1997.