A Winning Move: Bud Light Brings Back Celebrity Stars

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For Bud Light, the new football season doesn’t need a new approach. They’re opting for consistency over novelty and renewing their successful partnership with brand ambassadors – and frequent commercial stars – Peyton Manning and Shane Gillis.

This unlikely double act is back for a funny new ad, “The Move”, which finds the two men competing for service at a bar. Gillis tries to muscle in, but neither man can get served until Manning takes the unusual route of having two friends lift him up and angle him so he gets the server’s attention. The ad keeps to the recent and successful Bud Light formula of silly, quirky vignettes taking a sideways glance at the rituals around beer culture and watching sports.

Legendary quarterback Peyton Manning has been turning up in Bud Light commercials since 2023, and he was first joined by podcaster and comedian Shane Gillis the year after. We last saw the two of them with regular collaborator Post Malone, chasing a lost keg of Bud Light down a hill in the brand’s entertaining 2026 Super Bowl ad “Keg”.

In this ad, the pairing lets them recreate a classic comedy-duo format – a quiet guy who looks like he’s going to be outwitted by his louder pal but gets the last laugh. That joke structure also helps them tap into schadenfreude, one of the most effective but rarest types of happiness in ads.

Consistency matters in advertising, and retaining Manning and Gillis as the anchormen across different ads helps Bud Light and agency Anomaly NY spotlight different products and promotions while keeping a strong creative thread and helping ensure brand recognition. It’s a great way of using celebrities, letting their fame and public personae be an extra layer to the joke.

The power of consistency is clear from Bud Light’s fantastic short-term metrics on Test Your Ad. “The Move” gets 99% Brand Fluency, exceptional in any category, but also gets a 90% on Fast Fluency (compared to only 60% for the beer category as a whole). In other words, 9 out of 10 viewers know who “The Move” is for within just two seconds, thanks to strong early branding.

That links up with the exceptional emotional intensity the ad creates with its funny narrative, for a Spike Rating which smashes the category norm. “The Move” is in the top 1% of Beer and Cider ads for Spike, our measure predicting short-term sales boosts. And while the ad is designed for a limited football season run, it’s also a winner on long-term Star Rating, winding up in the top 5% of the category.

For a long time US beer ads have struggled to nail entertaining, consistent and well-branded ads. They would often be too bland, too product- or process-focused, or go the other direction and try to be too fashionable or edgy for a mainstream audience. With its ads starring Manning, Gillis and Malone, Bud Light are showing that they’ve found a consistent sweet spot for wide appeal and big sales boosts from funny, relatable storytelling. “The Move” is just the latest and greatest example.