Covid cancels Clydesdales on Bowl ‘55’

Whaaaa? The Budweiser Clydesdales won’t be featured in next Sunday’s Super Bowl?

“For the first time in 37 years, the beer company isn’t advertising during the Super Bowl,” writes Jordan Valinsky for CNN Business.

“Instead, Budweiser is shifting the money that would’ve been spent on the commercial slot — a reported $5.6 million for the Feb. 7 event — to support ‘critical covid-19 vaccine awareness’ with donations and future ad campaigns, the company said Monday [Jan. 25].”

I have loved Clydesdale horses for a long time. Enjoyed seeing the Clydesdales march in the dearly departed Arkansas State Fair Parade. Budweiser brought them to Little Rock just a few years ago to prance for a big crowd of onlookers in a downtown parking lot. One of the honeymoon highlights from my former marriage was touring Anheuser-Busch Brewery in St. Louis and seeing the horses in their personalized stalls. You can have your Thoroughbreds. Give me a big ol’, fat-bottomed Scottish draught horse that grows its own fuzzy house shoes!

I also somehow became fascinated with that catchy old “When You Say Bud” jingle but, luckily, never developed a taste for the beer.

Anyhoo: Surprise, surprise. The pandemic is behind the bowout of the “Bud Clydes’ from this year’s contest between the defending-champ Kansas City Chiefs, who hail from Yours Truly’s birth state, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “… The alcohol industry reeled from the sudden shutdown of bars, restaurants and big events,” according to vice president of marketing Monica Rustgi, who was quoted in the story. And the brand wants to turn its attention to urging people to become vaccinated. “Some of Budweiser’s planned advertising airtime this year will be given to the Ad Council and Covid Collaborative’s Vaccine Education Initiative. Last year, both organizations forged a partnership to educate the public about the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. Budweiser is donating $1 million worth of ad inventory on TV, radio and other places to the organizations for future ads.”

Turns out Budweiser’s not the only company saying no to Super Bowl advertising because of pandemic consequences, Valinsky writes. Coca-Cola, which recently eliminated 2,000 jobs due to declining revenue, and Pepsi, which chose to direct its dollars toward the halftime show instead, won’t be seen in commercials. Officials of other companies fear they’ll be

throwing good money after bad because of viewers being forced to put the kibosh on watch parties … hence, smaller TV ratings.

And yes, the cost of these 30-second Super Bowl commercials had indeed climbed to nearly $5.6 million by 2020, according to Sports Illustrated (si.com). Wow: $93,333 per second. The latter figure alone can pay for a goodly chunk of vaccine awareness promotion.

So look, here’s my suggestions for the network to recover at least some of any lost ad revenue. Time may be too short to execute some of these. But if, God forbid, things aren’t much better this time in 2022, try ’em then:

■ Have an oldies-commercial Super Bowl. Charge a substantially discounted price for companies to show vintage ads. The advertisers get a cheaper price and need spend no money on TV commercial production. The network gets something, which is better than nothing. “When You Say Bud,” delivered with gusto by a choir of marching singers, gets a whole new generation of singalong fans. Well, that, or our children and grandchildren will make faces and conclude that the entire 1970s was a big awkwardfamilyphotos. com entry.

■ Get independent bizzes from around the country (among the biggest sufferers of the pandemic’s economic consequences) to pool their meager resources toward generously discounted advertisements, each with “fast featurettes” of however many bizzes paid for each ad. Granted, if viewers blink, they might miss the micro ads for Ma’s Burgers; Baby-Dear’s Tire & Lube; that barbershop on the corner of Fourth and Orchard streets in the town of Hairball; the greasy-spoon everybody likes to eat at but whose name nobody can ever seem to recall; or Ben’s Cousin’s Friend’s Place. Again, the newwork would at least get something … and we can film the ads on our phones and slow ’em down later.

■ Get the general public to pitch in a nominal amount each to vote for, say, three companies — companies that have chosen not to pay for Super Bowl ads — to be featured after all. For an extra few bucks, each person can also enter a drawing to star in the winning companies’ commercials, to be at least partially paid for by the contest-entry money.

You know what I’m getting at with that third suggestion. The Talkmistress could end up in a commercial with those Budweiser Clydesdales … humming that theme song.