Budweiser’s 9/11 Tribute Aired Once During the 2002 Super Bowl. People Still Remember It
For 60 seconds during Super Bowl XXXVI, Budweiser put aside nearly everything people expected from a beer commercial.
There was no voice-over, no familiar jingle and almost no branding. Instead, a team of Budweiser Clydesdales traveled through a snow-covered landscape toward New York City. After crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, the horses stopped in Battery Park, with the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty behind them.
They then turned toward the place where the World Trade Center had stood.
One horse raised a leg, and the Clydesdales bowed.
The screen eventually showed three simple words: We’ll never forget.
The commercial, known as Clydesdale Respect, aired only once, on February 3, 2002, during Super Bowl XXXVI.
That single broadcast became one of the most remembered advertising tributes connected to September 11.
A Tribute Just Months After September 11
The timing gives the commercial much of its emotional weight.
The September 11 attacks had happened less than five months earlier. New York was still dealing with the aftermath at Ground Zero, and the United States was at war.
The country was still trying to find the right words for what had happened. Budweiser’s creative team chose almost none.
Instead, the company relied on the Clydesdales and a quiet journey toward New York.
The original commercial opened with the horses leaving a farm with snow still covering the ground. They traveled through rural areas and small towns, with people stopping to watch them pass. Their journey eventually brought them across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Lower Manhattan.
At the end, the horses faced the New York skyline and bowed toward the former World Trade Center site.
Budweiser’s logo appeared only at the end, keeping the focus on the tribute rather than the product. Contemporary accounts and later recollections consistently identify the commercial as a one-time Super Bowl broadcast.
Budweiser Confirmed It Was Meant to Be a Tribute
Years later, Snopes contacted Anheuser-Busch about the commercial. The company confirmed that it had aired only once.
Budweiser said it had been overwhelmed by the response and explained that the company wanted to honor people affected by September 11 in a respectful way.
The decision not to repeatedly broadcast the original spot helped give it an unusual place in advertising history. Rather than becoming a conventional campaign that appeared repeatedly throughout the year, the commercial remained tied to that single Super Bowl moment.
The original television broadcast was eventually followed by anniversary versions, but those were different productions rather than routine reruns of the 2002 spot.
Filming the Commercial in New York Was a Major Undertaking
Creating the commercial in late 2001 required far more than bringing the Clydesdales to New York and turning on a camera.
Bob Lachky, then executive vice president of Anheuser-Busch Global Creative, later recalled that the production involved a helicopter flying over the Brooklyn Bridge.
The shoot required cooperation from multiple authorities, including members of Congress and the New York City Mayor’s Office. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani also gave approval for the production’s aerial work.
That was particularly significant because New York’s airspace and security environment remained exceptionally sensitive in the months following the attacks.
Lachky recalled that Giuliani allowed the production into the city and described the opportunity to use a helicopter to film the Clydesdales and their arrival in Battery Park as extraordinary.
The result was a striking piece of footage: eight enormous horses moving through a city still recovering from an attack only months earlier.
The Horse at the Center of the Tribute Was Ringo
One of the most memorable details of the commercial involved a Clydesdale named Ringo.
Amy Trout, a ranch manager at Anheuser-Busch, said Ringo was one of her favorite Clydesdales and was specifically taught to perform the bow featured in the commercial.
Training a Clydesdale for Budweiser’s programs is a lengthy process. According to Trout’s account, training begins at around six months, when foals are weaned and sent to Grant’s Farm in St. Louis. They then spend roughly three and a half years learning the behavior and skills expected of a Budweiser Clydesdale.
Ringo had one particularly unusual skill to master: bowing for the 9/11 tribute.
The gesture looks almost impossibly deliberate on screen, but it was not created through a camera trick. The horses were trained to perform it.
The Tribute Returned for Later Anniversaries
Although the original commercial appeared only once in 2002, Budweiser eventually revisited the idea.
For the 10th anniversary of September 11 in 2011, the company released an updated version. The commercial retained the basic concept while reflecting the changed New York skyline. Contemporary reporting noted that the updated version was also used in connection with efforts supporting the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
Then, in 2021, Budweiser created another version for the 20th anniversary.
The newer commercial showed the Clydesdales traveling through New York again, this time with the modern skyline visible. One World Trade Center appeared in the background, along with the Tribute in Light commemorating the Twin Towers. The 2021 version aired twice on September 11, during the Air Force-Navy football game and later during the New York Yankees-New York Mets game.
The distinction matters: the original 2002 commercial remained a one-time broadcast, while the later anniversary versions were separate updates.
In 2026, Anheuser-Busch announced another planned airing of the 2002 Respect commercial for the 25th anniversary of September 11. The company said this would mark only the fourth time the original commercial had been aired, following the original 2002 broadcast and anniversary airings in 2011 and 2021.
Why the Original Commercial Stayed With People
There was very little to the 2002 commercial by conventional advertising standards.
The Clydesdales walked. The landscape changed. New York appeared. The horses stopped.
Then they bowed.
There was no sales pitch competing with the moment. The Budweiser branding waited until the end, leaving the tribute itself to carry the commercial.
That simplicity is part of why the footage continues to resurface around September 11 each year. The original broadcast lasted only 60 seconds, but its imagery became familiar to people who saw it during that first Super Bowl after the attacks and to later generations who encountered it online.
The commercial was designed for one particular moment in American history. More than two decades later, the image of the Clydesdales standing silently before the New York skyline remains the part people remember most.
One broadcast. Eight Clydesdales. Sixty seconds. And a bow that became Budweiser’s enduring tribute to September 11.