Bud Light’s Eagles Statue Begs the Question: Are Branded Statues a Thing Now?

Brendan Menapace

It’s almost impossible to forget Bud Light’s “Dilly Dilly” marketing campaign, as it was part of just about every commercial break during last year’s NFL season. You couldn’t go to a sports bar or tailgate without hearing at least one person yell it before clinking drinks with another person.

Following the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl victory, the tie between the team and the brand became pretty official, as Bud Light sent a bunch of cases of beer to former Eagles player Beau Allen. During the victory parade in Philly, skywriters flew over the crowd writing “Philly Philly” and “Dilly Dilly.” The company also gifted free Bud Light to Philly bars during the parade, complete with promotional items like poker chips, armor (for the Bud Knight) and old-timey scrolls to mix with the Renaissance-themed branding for the campaign.

All of this is not just because the two rhyme, though that certainly helped. It has to do with one of most memorable plays in Super Bowl history: the Philly Special.

After the game, the NFL released audio from a mic’d up Eagles quarterback Nick Foles and head coach Doug Pederson. Foles went over to the sideline and said “Do you want Philly Philly?” To which Pederson said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

That moment in sports is now Philadelphia legend, and Bud Light commemorated it by gifting the Eagles a 9 ft. statue of Foles and Pederson deciding on the play, with Foles’ quote engraved on the bottom alongside the Bud Light logo.

Bud Light plans to leave the statue in the stadium complex for years, conveniently located near the XFinity Live! bar, which has all sorts of Bud Light signage around.

We’ve already discussed the way the “Dilly Dilly” campaign has managed to stick around much longer than a lot of people would think, due to the sheer silliness of it. (Silly Silly? Sorry.) But, this brings up a new question:

Are promotional statues going to be the new thing?

Philadelphia’s stadium area is full of other Philly sports heroes in statue form, but none of them feature branding from outside companies, like this Bud Light one does. Does Bud Light’s statue pave the way for more companies to gift cities with branded statues?

The answer, in our opinion, is yeah, probably. No self-respecting Eagles fan is going to go out in public and say this statue is bad. Still only a few months out of the sheer bliss and collective sigh of relief this city experienced after the Super Bowl win, that’d pretty much be blasphemy. Sacrilege, even!

No, the statue will stay, and Bud Light knows it’s going to stay. At least for a while.

At the end of the day, sports franchises are businesses. Every statue for a former player is still an advertisement for the brand and its history. Is what Bud Light is doing that different? If Coors donated a statue of Peyton Manning for outside of Mile High Stadium, would Denver fans be upset? Probably not.

By that logic, we likely haven’t seen the last of branded statues.

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