The Kick: My Most Memorable Clydesdale Commercial

"You want to do what???"

That was my reaction the day the Budweiser Marketing team came to me with an idea. 

"Jim, we need one of the Clydesdales to kick a field goal for a Super Bowl commercial." 

Right, and let's have one of them sing the national anthem while we're at it. 

That may not have been my exact reaction that day at the Budweiser corporate office, but it was close. 

I'd seen draft horses do some amazing things throughout my career, but kicking a football?

I thought about it though. And within mere minutes I was excited.

Because one of the things I liked best about working at Anheuser-Busch was that it taught me to think outside the box.

And thinking outside the box can lead to some pretty epic things – like being involved in one of the most memorable commercials of our time.

I was 100% in.

Now we just needed the athletes. In this case, very large, four-legged ones. We needed defensive and offensive lines, a snapper, a holder, and a kicker who could come through in the clutch.

At the time, we had roughly 300 Clydesdales in our herd. All were prototypical Budweiser Clydesdales when it came to color, and all had the size and strength that would make even Belichick or Madden salivate.

But it was a small group of roughly 10 who we thought had that little extra ‘star quality’ that we sent to the western U.S. to work with a world-famous animal trainer. Here they would be molded into football/tv stars.

But who would emerge as the infamous kicker?

”Marty.”

Yep. Marty. The famous Clydesdale with the not-so-famous name.

He was one of our hitch horses, trained to work in various positions on any one of our 8-horse teams. Little did Marty know, he was about to go down in history. 

I’ll never forget watching the commercial that day as it aired. I’m not much of a smiler, but, on that day, I couldn’t resist. What a win for our company, for our marketing team, for Budweiser Clydesdale Operations, and for the Clydesdale breed as a whole.

And for Marty!  He was an instant star. Everyone wanted to know who this Clydesdale was that kicked a field goal.

“How did he do that?”

“Did he really kick that?”

“Can I meet him?”

It would be a while before many got to meet the new star though. He was given several weeks off (with pay in the form of good food and treats of course!) in a nice open pasture for his accomplishment.

For several years to come our Budweiser Marketing & Clydesdale Operations teams continued to think outside the box. We went on a wild run of EPIC commercials that included Clydesdales in a snowball fight, a zebra refereeing a Clydesdale football game, Clydesdales taking a knee to New York City following 9/11, and many more.

Looking back, I’m so glad I was asked that day about a Clydesdale kicking a football.

I’m just glad they didn’t need us to go deep for six.