Peyton Manning’s Budweiser Comment Was The Best Advertising Of Super Bowl 50 — Here’s Why

Peyton Manning’s Budweiser comment was the best marketing of Super Bowl 50. Some might disagree. The puppy monkey baby commercial received millions of views this morning, and the Doritos baby commercial was an unforgettable piece of marketing that will be hard for me to unsee going forward.

Luckily, marketing isn’t a foreign subject for me, and I know that the polarizing Super Bowl advertisements are often the ones that stick in people’s minds the most. In short: the crazier, the better.

While Peyton Manning was busy winning the Super Bowl, I was hard at work watching the Super Bowl ads, and only the two I mentioned above stuck in my mind. But one other advertisement stuck in my mind, and it was Peyton Manning’s Budweiser comment after the game.

Peyton Manning winning the Super Bowl marks the second-longest span between wins for a QB in Super Bowl history pic.twitter.com/q0RTkEXS9Z

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) February 8, 2016

The world was watching. We wanted to know what Peyton was going to say after the game. I had a few thoughts of my own during the interview. One of them was obviously whether Peyton is going to retire. And the interviewer asked it.

I was on edge. It was the moment that millions of people’s ears perked up in suspense — waiting for Peyton’s response.

He said, “You know I’ll take some time to reflect. I got a couple of priorities first. I want to go kiss my wife and my kids, I want to go hug my family.”

“I’m going to drink a lot of Budweiser tonight, Tracy, I promise you that. I’m going to take care of those things first, and definitely say a little prayer and thank the man upstairs for this great opportunity.”

There it was, embedded directly into his interview, while the whole world was hanging on Peyton Manning’s every word.

People reports that Peyton Manning wasn’t paid for his Budweiser shout-out.

“We didn’t know the shout out was coming either, but we’re glad it did,” Budweiser tweeted after Manning’s interview.

Apex MG Analytics said that the mention gave Budweiser $1.6 million-plus of brand recognition value.

In the midst of the puppy monkey baby and Dorito baby mess, Peyton took the time to make a heartfelt comment about Budweiser that will leave audiences paying more attention to the beer brand than ever.

For one, when a company decides to use a brand sponsor, they pay them. Their words aren’t their own on TV, but the New York Times also reports Budweiser says they didn’t pay Peyton Manning for that. How could they know he would be in that situation after the game? The Denver Broncos could’ve lost.

On the other hand, Peyton’s a huge sponsor for Papa Johns and Nationwide — we all know that. If he mentioned a brand like Papa Johns during that interview it would definitely come across as tacky, but since he has no ties to Budweiser, it made it seem all the more authentic.

The truth of the matter is that a spot in the Super Bowl advertisements is highly sought after for brands everywhere, but Budweiser, with the help of Peyton Manning, trumped every single brand last night.

It’s no secret that we don’t listen to advertisements anymore. It’s been hit on by marketing experts everywhere for years and years since the television was invented. Will Super Bowl advertisements actually affect the bottom line of some companies? Will that Hulk and Ant-Man commercial really do anything to boost Coca-Cola’s sales?

Probably not. People will continue to buy Coke regardless. People will continue to buy Doritos regardless. People will continue to buy Mountain Dew, despite the puppy monkey baby, regardless. Super Bowl advertisements are there for entertainment purposes. It’s a chance for brands to mostly maintain, not boost, sales.

But the Budweiser comment by Peyton Manning gave us an inside look on Peyton. This is the beer of his choice. It was authentic, and since Peyton actually drinks Budweiser and doesn’t just get paid to stand up and says he does, that might convince a good portion of people to try it.

Peyton Manning got to transfer his own values onto the Budweiser brand, and they’re fantastic values. When I look at Peyton, I see a professional, humble, family-loving man who cares about all the right things. It was a great thing for Budweiser, and that’s why I think they won the battle of Super Bowl advertisements with a post-game interview by Peyton Manning.

[Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images]