You know the horses.
I don’t even have to say the name of the company yet, do I? (ps “Dream Big” is one of my faves)
The enormous Clydesdales. The beautiful countryside. The barn. The wagon. The puppy who refuses to leave his best friend. 🥹
The trainer who raises a foal, watches him grow and then sees him again years later. UGH back to 😭.
And, usually, a piece of music placed at precisely the right moment…
OH GREAT, BUDWEISER. I was just trying to watch football. 🏈 Why am I crying now?
This is not by accident, friends.
For this installment of Why This Worked, I want to look at one of the most recognizable and emotionally effective assets in advertising history: the Budweiser Clydesdales. 🐎
These commercials are not successful because horses are beautiful. And they are not simply heartwarming little films attached to a very large advertising budget.
They work because Budweiser has spent decades creating an emotional world that people recognize, remember and willingly return to.
And before you think, Well, that is lovely for a gigantic company with a Super Bowl budget, Karen, but what does it have to do with my business???
Stay with me, friend.
First, you do not need eight Clydesdales, a team of Hollywood filmmakers or millions of dollars. (although any of those would be super fun)
What you do need to understand is what story your business is telling.
The horses are selling something bigger than beer
Budweiser rarely asks the Clydesdales to explain the beer.
The horses are not standing in a pasture discussing ingredients, pricing or why this bottle is superior to another bottle. Lolz
Instead, they sell what Budweiser wants the beer to represent:
Tradition
Loyalty
Friendship
Perseverance
Homecoming
American optimism
The belief that we can make it through hard things together
This is the biggest lesson in this entire campaign:
The Budweiser Clydesdales didn’t become advertising icons because they repeatedly promoted a product. They became icons because they repeatedly delivered a recognizable emotional experience.
A little history if you’re interested: The Clydesdales became part of the Budweiser story in 1933, when August A. Busch Jr. and Adolphus Busch presented their father with a six-horse hitch to celebrate the return of beer at the end of Prohibition. The company quickly recognized their promotional potential and began taking them around the country. (Anheuser-Busch’s official history)
This was not a mascot invented for one campaign and abandoned six weeks later.
Over time, the horses became what marketers call a distinctive brand asset, something we can recognize and connect to the company before we see its logo or hear a product pitch.
THIS is where small businesses and creators should pay attention.
Most of us do not have a famous team of horses.
But you can build recognition around:
A recurring character or person
A recognizable phrase
A visual motif
A particular way you open your videos
A named series
A consistent kind of story
A point of view people immediately associate with you
In fact, that is one of the things I am building with Why This Worked. The campaigns will change. The examples will change. But the premise remains recognizable: we are going to look at marketing that truly connected with people, find out WHY and then determine what we can borrow from it.
Recognition is not reserved only for companies with enormous budgets. It is built through meaningful repetition. YOU can do that, too!
This part is SO smart. And falls perfectly in line with the way social media and YouTube is moving… tell your story in a series format.
“Brotherhood” followed the relationship between a trainer and a Clydesdale. “Puppy Love” gave us an irresistible friendship between a puppy and a horse. “Lost Dog” created separation, danger, rescue and reunion. A later commercial followed an injured horse’s recovery. “First Delivery” gave us a determined young foal trying to prove what he could do.
Different plots ➡ Same emotional universe.
Budweiser shares different stories while keeping the emotional promise intact.
Small businesses often do the reverse. We may keep using the same content format while changing our entire personality from one post to the next.
Today we are funny.
Tomorrow we sound like a corporation.
The next day we are inspirational.
On Friday, we sound as though an AI swallowed a marketing textbook and wrote our caption.
Your content does not have to look exactly the same every day. But the experience of your brand should feel connected.
Ask yourself:
How do I want people to feel when they encounter my work?
What themes appear again and again in the stories I tell?
Is there an emotional quality people could begin to associate with me?
Does my content sound as though it is coming from the same human being?
The Clydesdales carry an unmistakable feeling of Americana.
The farms. The barns. The open land. The craftsmanship. The weathered fences. The wagon. The hard work. The music. The idea of neighbors helping neighbors and ordinary people overcoming difficult things.
It is nostalgia, but it is doing more than reminding us of the past. It is orienting us emotionally. It gives us a world that feels familiar, steady and reassuring.
And it continues to work. Budweiser’s 2025 “First Delivery” Clydesdale commercial won USA Today’s Ad Meter, while coverage of that year’s Super Bowl advertising noted how brands were leaning into heartland nostalgia and American resilience. (Forbes)
Your customer may purchase a service, a lesson, a product or a ticket. But what are they hoping to feel or accomplish because they chose you?
Now we get to one of my FAVORITE parts of this strategy.
Before the 2014 Super Bowl, “Puppy Love” appeared 75 times on national television and approximately 1,200 times on local broadcasts, nearly four times the local coverage received by the next most-covered commercial.
It generated over 1 million online shares, with more than 1.1 million occurring before the game even began. (Unruly’s campaign analysis)
The Washington Post reported before kickoff that the commercial already had more than 23 million views and was making people cry on Twitter. (The Washington Post)
Think about what happened there.
News shows talked about the horses. Entertainment programs showed clips. People posted reactions. Friends shared the commercial. Commentators ranked it. Others spoofed it.
And every share reminded people of Budweiser again.
This is something businesses of every size can use, especially in social media!
We often publish our biggest piece of content once and then move immediately to the next thing. One post. One caption. One tiny prayer to the algorithm. Then it disappears down the feed.
Instead, work on creating an arc in your social marketing:
Seed the idea.
Introduce the story.
Publish the centerpiece.
Share reactions or behind-the-scenes material.
Clip out individual lessons.
Invite your audience into the conversation.
Revisit the story when it becomes relevant again.
One strong idea can become an ecosystem of content.
That is not “posting the same thing over and over.” It is helping people enter the idea from different directions.
A warning: emotion must still connect back to YOU
There is one potential problem with emotional marketing.
People can love a beautiful story and completely forget who created it.
Budweiser largely avoids that because it has spent decades connecting these particular horses, the hitch, the wagon and this style of storytelling to its brand.
The Clydesdales are not interchangeable stock footage. They belong to Budweiser in the public imagination.
So please do not take this article to mean, “Post something touching and hope people buy.”
Connect the feeling to something recognizably yours:
Your language
Your values
Your recurring themes
Your people
Your process
Your origin story
Your visual world
Your named ideas
Otherwise, someone may remember that a post made them feel wonderful but have absolutely no idea who made it.
No horses required. I promise. 🐴 (But srsly tho’ who doesn’t want a horse?)
✱ Choose an emotional promise - How should people regularly feel after encountering your content? encouraged, capable, understood, curious, relieved or ready to act?
✱ Build recurring assets - Develop phrases, series, images, themes and ways of communicating that gain meaning through repetition.
Starting over every week is not automatically more creative! It’s exhausting. You don’t need to do that!
✱ Tell stories with stakes - Show us what was difficult. What almost did not happen? What changed? Why did it matter?
✱ Create something worth repeating - A promo announcement may not travel beyond the people who already follow you. But a surprising story, meaningful result, strong opinion, emotional moment or remarkable customer transformation gives other people a reason to talk.
✱ Let the product step back, but not disappear - You do not have to interrupt every meaningful story with a sales pitch. Lead with the meaning. Make the connection to your work clear. Then provide an easy path to the offer.
✱ You do not need their budget to use their brilliance - The Mac vs. PC campaign made a product feel easier, friendlier and more human. The Clydesdales made a brand feel bigger than its product.
That is the difference I keep coming back to.
You may not be able to buy a Super Bowl commercial. For sure most of us cannot. You may not have generations of brand recognition behind you. And I am going to assume you do not have eight magnificent Clydesdales waiting patiently behind your office.
But you CAN:
Decide how you want people to feel
Create something recognizable
Tell stories only you can tell instead of only making announcements
Build multiple pieces of content around one strong idea
Give people something hopeful, useful or meaningful enough to share
Repeat your core message long enough for it to become connected to you
This is how recognition begins. Not with millions of dollars.
With clarity. Emotion. Consistency.
And! The courage to keep telling your stories and how those around you will benefit what you bring to the table.
This is the second installment of Why This Worked, an occasional series where I dig into marketing, advertising and social media that made us stop, notice, remember and maybe even buy, to figure out what the rest of us can learn from it and how to do it ourselves.
And ummmmm YES! There will also be the occasional Oops: Why This DIDN’T Work. Because sometimes the marketing lessons that cost somebody else millions are the most fun ones to study. 😜
Next up! Top social media campaigns… OOOH I’M SO EXCITED!! This is my absolute wheelhouse… and guess what? You have homework, dear friend! Please go follow the National Park Services Instagram account. BRILLIANT! And, one of my absolute faves. 🦋💖
Have a fab weekend and see you in Notes and next week!
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