It’s debatable, really, whether most of the 100-million-plus people who will “watch” the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 2, 2014, will be doing so to cheer on a favored football team or to enjoy, mock, and/or rate the commercials that monopolize the expensive minutes in between plays.
In honor of this annual nod to the supposed powers of television marketing, here are 10 great commercials featuring horses…and here’s hoping that we’ll see a few more come Sunday.
1 A “Super Bowl Commercial List” certainly wouldn’t be complete without the Budweiser Clydesdales. The 2013 Super Bowl ad was a winner in my book…I’m admittedly a “softy,” but it gets me every time.
2 Carrying on with the Fleetwood Mac theme, and bookending the “Big Horse” nicely with a wee Shetland, we get this treat:
3 In case Number 2 on our list didn’t convince you that horses like to get their groove on, check out OPI’s offering:
4 It would appear that script writers and commercial producers are itching for a good reason to show a horse flashing some fancy footwork:
5 And sticking with the laughs, Will Ferrell proves that he is NOT a horse person:
6 It’s not surprising that the automobile industry features horses in its ads—but as a horseWOMAN, this one, in particular, speaks to me:
7 There’s certainly little that embodies “drama” and “heart” like the racetrack, and this black-and-white piece from Longines succeeds in increasing your pulse:
8 And sticking with the black-and-white (and utterly effective), who’d have thought Guinness could get me all choked up? But something about this vintage-type imagery just GETS me:
9 Here’s a “someday horse story” with which many of us can identify, and Prudential has done a marvelous job transmitting their message while speaking to our heart:
10 And last, but certainly not least, our own Jonathan Field, horse trainer and author of the forthcoming TSB book THE ART OF LIBERTY TRAINING FOR HORSES, broke into the mainstream with this fabulous commercial from Blackberry:
You can preorder Jonathan Field’s book at the TSB online bookstore, where shipping in the US is always FREE.
And shop all our great horse books and DVDs at www.HorseandRiderBooks.com.
–Rebecca Didier, Senior Editor