The frogs’ first Budweiser ad appeared during Super Bowl XXIX in 1995. Its short joke took a sound that a real frog might make and arranged three voices into the beer’s name.
The ad
It opens on a swamp at night. A frog, Bud, croaks his name. Another, Weis, joins in, then a third, Er. For about ten seconds they croak randomly. Then they fall into rhythm: “Bud… weis… er… Bud-weis-er.” The croaking speeds up as the camera pulls back to reveal a bar with a glowing neon Budweiser sign.
The Paley Center for Media’s archive credits Dave Swaine as copywriter, Michael Smith as art director and Gore Verbinski as director. The agency was D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles in St. Louis. The archive identifies the original ad separately from later commercials using the same characters.
Tom Woodard, who voiced Bud, says Smith and Swaine asked him to help make the frogs sound convincing. He combined a bed of crickets and other pond sounds with the three foreground voices. In his account, Woodard was Bud, Ronnie Brooks was Weis and Brian Steckler was Er. He also says the spot was not originally pitched as the start of a series or even as a Super Bowl ad.
Why it caught on
Woodard says the agency hired Stan Winston to make the frogs. Later ads expanded what the characters could do; in one, Bud catches a passing Budweiser truck with his tongue and is pulled away. The simple sound idea had become a recurring set of characters.
The appeal was simple:
- The brand name was the joke. Every time the frogs croaked, viewers heard the product name, repeated in a way that was fun to imitate.
- It was short and silly. In a Super Bowl full of big productions, three frogs in a swamp stood out.
- It was built for repetition. The croak was easy to copy, so people did.
The ad had enough recognition to support sequels, but recognition is not a measure of beer sales attributable to the frogs.
The backlash
In 1996 Mothers Against Drunk Driving called for Anheuser-Busch to pull the ads, calling them the “Joe Camel” of beer advertising. Its president said the characters appealed to teens and young children. She cited a survey in which more than half of children aged 6 to 11 recognized the frogs. That was evidence of recognition, not proof that the commercials changed drinking behavior.
Anheuser-Busch held its own news conference nearby and refused, saying it saw no reason to halt the campaign and that parents talking to their children about alcohol would do more than blaming TV ads.
What came next
The frogs stayed and gained co-stars. A later Super Bowl campaign by Goodby Silverstein & Partners put two lizards against them. Contemporary Los Angeles Times coverage described Louie and Frankie plotting to replace the frogs as Budweiser’s advertising characters.
Those later stories changed the original format from a single sound gag to a series. The first commercial remains distinct: three voices in a swamp, organized to say one brand name.
Why “mixed”
The frogs won attention and became repeat characters, while MADD publicly objected to using those appealing animal characters to advertise beer. Anheuser-Busch disagreed and continued the campaign. Both the creative success and the documented criticism belong in its history.