Respect

Why it works

Five months after September 11, the Budweiser Clydesdales leave their stables, travel through snowy countryside and over the Brooklyn Bridge, then halt within sight of lower Manhattan and bow toward the space where the towers stood. Directed by Zack Snyder, it aired once, during Super Bowl XXXVI on February 3, 2002, and the original never ran on TV again. Anheuser-Busch got Mayor Rudy Giuliani's blessing and rare permission to film from a helicopter over the city. It is studied as the benchmark for a brand acknowledging national grief without cashing in on it: the logo is held back until the very end, and airing it only once made the restraint part of the message. Mike Sheehan, chief executive of Hill Holliday, the agency behind it, later argued that such a message only needs saying once, and objected when Anheuser-Busch InBev remade it for the tenth anniversary in 2011. Ad Age counts it among Budweiser's greatest Super Bowl spots.