(Courtesy Anhueser-Busch / Budweiser / YouTube)

The polarizing beer comercial aired during Super Bowl XLIX back in 2015, and if ever there was an ad that Anheuser-Busch (who are usually so good at these kinds of things) probably wishes they could take back, it’s this one.

But time may have proven them right

It was during craft beer’s boom years, when Budweiser’s “Brewed The Hard Way” aired. Craft breweries were posting double-digit growth and mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch clearly felt threatened, so much so that it had already begun a dedicated campaign to acquire them.

In 2011, AB InBev shocked the craft beer world with the purchase of Chicago-based Goose Island Beer in 2011. The purchase of Blue Point and 10 Barrel Brewing in 2014, as well as the acquisition of Breckenridge and Elysian Brewing in 2015, the same year it touted the strength of Budweiser while taking shots at craft beer and its growing number of fans in the  Super Bowl XLIX.

And here’s some of the bulleted text from that polarizing spot that pissed off craft beer’s many fans…

• Proudly a macro beer. It’s not brewed to be fussed over.
• The people who drink our beer are people who like drinking beer. To drink beer brewed the hard way.
• Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale. We’ll be brewing us some golden suds. This is the famous Budweiser beer. This bud’s for you.

The backlash from the craft beer professionals and the community in general. was as immediate as it was sometimes hilarious…

One of the first stories to hit the web post-Super Bowl was an excellent piece from Paste Magazine which thoroughly dissected claims listed throughout the ad’s flashing text.

Paste was also one of the first to point out the Elephant in the Room, the disparaging reference made to “Pumpkin Peach Ale,” a style similar to a beer crafted by Elysian in 2015 (Peach Pecan Pumpkin Ale) the same year the brewery was acquired by Anheuser-Busch.

Even more interesting was the Chicago Tribune’s post-Super Bowl interview with Elysian co-founder Dick Cantwell who had cut ties with the Seattle-based brewery after it was acquired by Anheuser-Busch, and was clearly unhappy with the commercial…

“I find it kind of incredible that ABI would be so tone-deaf as to pretty directly (even if unwittingly) call out one of the breweries they have recently acquired, even as that brewery is dealing with the anger of the beer community in reaction to the sale. It doesn’t make our job any easier, and it certainly doesn’t make me feel any better about a deal I didn’t even want to happen.”

The Atlantic had a phenomenal article on the marketing choices large brewers are making in the headwinds of losing market share, concluding that this was not a preferable way for their branding to move forward.

Mikkeller of Denmark formally invited Budweiser to Copenhagen’s Beer Celebration that May with a humorous, tongue-in-cheek letter on their Facebook page.

Not only did craft brewers and pundits weigh in on this poor choice in marketing, even MillerCoors distanced themselves from Bud’s gaffe as reported by AdAge.

But that was back then, when craft beer was at its hottest…

By 2019 Anhueser-Busch had acquired 13 craft properties, the majority of those now jettisoned, due to poor sales.

And a decade later, Anheuser-Busch’s dismissive take on craft beer has in some ways proven more right than wrong. We see more craft brewers than ever before, trumpeting their latest “straightforward” traditional lagers, and less, well say it, Pumpkin Peach ales.

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