On September 11, 2001, advertising suddenly became irrelevant. Commercial campaigns were pulled. Promotions were canceled. Airlines stopped selling seats. Networks went commercial-free as news coverage consumed television.
According to reporting at the time, broadcasters lost roughly $200 million in advertising revenue during the four days in which commercials were largely suspended after the attacks.
It was an extraordinary moment for an industry built around finding exactly the right thing to say.
There simply wasn’t one.
Twenty-five years later, some of advertising’s most enduring responses to 9/11 remain the campaigns that understood that tension – work that stepped away from the hard sell and instead focused on grief, unity, recovery and service.
The mistakes are just as instructive.
Together, they created an unwritten rule for brands responding to tragedy: if the marketing becomes more memorable than the people being remembered, something has probably gone wrong.
When the commercials stopped
After the planes hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania dirt, the first response was silence.
Airlines worldwide immediately canceled advertising after the attacks. British Airways suspended its consumer marketing worldwide, while Virgin Atlantic, Aer Lingus and Singapore Airlines were among carriers delaying or withdrawing campaigns and promotions. British Airways said at the time that commercial messaging was inappropriate during such a sensitive moment.
Other advertisers began scrutinizing existing creative for images, language or jokes that suddenly carried horrifying new meanings.
A television promotion that inadvertently aired in New York after the attacks showed a model positioned between images of the World Trade Center towers – exactly the kind of previously innocuous creative that agencies suddenly had to locate and remove.
Coca-Cola put its “Life Tastes Good” campaign on hold “out of respect for the victims, their families and the nation,” while other brands wrestled with whether returning to normal advertising might itself provide some measure of comfort.
There was no playbook.
The industry was writing one in real time.
The Ad Council simply said: ‘I am an American’
Within days, one of the clearest creative responses emerged. The Ad Council’s “I Am an American” PSA featured Americans of different races, ages, and ethnic backgrounds looking directly into the camera and repeating the same simple statement.
“I am an American.”
There was no product.
No celebrity.
No elaborate production conceit.
The message culminated in “E pluribus unum” — out of many, one.
The Ad Council described the PSA as its immediate industry response to September 11, designed to emphasize the country’s diversity at a moment when fear and anger were beginning to spill over onto Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and South Asian communities.
Its restraint became part of its power.
Advertising was beginning to discover that acknowledgment could be more effective than explanation.
American Express told New York: open for business
As weeks passed, another challenge emerged.
How could brands encourage Americans to resume ordinary life without appearing to commercialize tragedy?
American Express had a particularly direct connection. Its headquarters stood at the World Financial Center across from the World Trade Center and suffered significant damage in the attacks.
The company responded with advertising encouraging people to support businesses in Lower Manhattan.
Its “Open for Business” campaign featured actual downtown merchants – restaurants, shoe-shine stands, dry cleaners, and other neighborhood businesses struggling to survive as foot traffic disappeared.
The message was essentially: their lights are back on. Their phones are working. Now come back.
American Express later described the campaign as part of its effort to support downtown merchants and reaffirm its commitment to returning to its own Lower Manhattan headquarters.
This was commerce, certainly.
But the product being sold wasn’t an American Express card.
It was Lower Manhattan.
Airlines had to sell the thing people suddenly feared
Few industries faced a harder advertising challenge than aviation.
Southwest Airlines was among the first major U.S. carriers to return to television advertising, just over a week after the attacks. Its usual comic tone disappeared, replaced by more sober messages about continuing to move forward.
United Airlines followed with one of the era’s more fascinating campaigns. Rather than relying on actors or polished copy, agency Fallon Worldwide interviewed United employees – pilots, flight attendants and other workers – about returning to work and what flying meant after September 11.
Creative director Bob Moore originally planned scripted testimonials but abandoned them after hearing the employees speak.
The resulting documentary-style work included sentiments about being knocked down and getting back up, eventually landing on the idea:
“We are United.”
The campaign drew divided reactions. Some marketing observers argued that reminding nervous travelers of 9/11 was precisely what an airline should avoid. Others said an event that enormous could not credibly be ignored.
That debate — acknowledge the tragedy or move forward without invoking it — would follow advertisers for years.
Then came ‘Keep America Rolling’
The automobile industry took a more commercial route. With consumer spending falling after the attacks, automakers began presenting purchases as part of the country’s economic recovery.
General Motors launched “Keep America Rolling,” offering zero-percent financing and framing automobile buying as a way to keep the economy moving.
Ford used “Ford Drives America,” while Chevrolet told consumers that buying a vehicle was one way to help “keep America rolling forward.”
The campaigns were commercially successful enough to become part of the period’s advertising history, but they also exposed the danger brands were entering.
When does patriotism become a sales tactic?
Even in 2001, critics questioned whether companies were supporting economic recovery or wrapping promotional incentives in the flag.
It became one of advertising’s first big post-9/11 ethical questions.
Budweiser bows
Then came perhaps the most famous 9/11 commercial ever made. During Super Bowl XXXVI in February 2002, Budweiser aired “Respect.”
The Clydesdales travel toward New York, crossing into the city before stopping with the skyline in the distance.
Then the horses bow.
No dialogue.
No joke.
No product demonstration.
The commercial originally aired only once.
Budweiser returned to the idea for the 10th and 20th anniversaries, updating the New York skyline as the World Trade Center site evolved. This year, for the 25th anniversary, Anheuser-Busch says “Respect” will air again – only the fourth broadcast of the spot in 25 years – as part of its partnership with the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
That rarity matters.
Budweiser resisted the temptation to turn the tribute into an annual brand asset.
Perhaps that is why it endured.
REELated:
Pete Davidson turns 9/11 remembrance into action
Spike Lee, State Farm and the children of New York
By the tenth anniversary in 2011, brands faced a different challenge. Enough time had passed that commemorative advertising was expected – but consumers had become increasingly sensitive to companies using September 11 as branded content.
State Farm worked with filmmaker Spike Lee on a tribute built around nearly 150 New York-area schoolchildren visiting firehouses and singing “Empire State of Mind (Part II)” to firefighters.
Proceeds from downloads of the song benefited the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
The creative focused less on State Farm than on New York, firefighters, and a generation of children too young to remember the attacks themselves.
That year illustrated another change.
Some brands simply chose not to advertise at all.
Walmart posted an American flag to Facebook. Clear Channel Outdoor observed an hour and 17 minutes of silence across more than 450 digital billboards before running memorial messages throughout the remainder of the day.
Silence had become a legitimate media strategy.
And then brands learned exactly what not to do
Not everyone learned the lesson.
In 2016, Miracle Mattress in San Antonio promoted a “Twin Tower Sale,” offering mattresses of any size for the price of a twin.
Its video culminated with two employees falling backward into twin stacks of mattresses, knocking them over. “We’ll never forget,” the ad concluded.
The backlash was immediate. The company apologized, and the store announced that it would close indefinitely.
It may be the clearest example of the dividing line the advertising industry had spent 15 years discovering.
Remembering a tragedy is not the same thing as turning it into a promotion.
From remembrance to service
Twenty-five years later, the newest 9/11 campaign offers another evolution.
Instead of asking people simply to remember, it asks them to act.
The nonprofit 9/11 Day has launched “UNIITE For Good,” a nationwide campaign featuring Pete Davidson, whose father, FDNY firefighter Scott Davidson, died on September 11.
The initiative calls for one million good deeds in connection with the anniversary and includes television, radio, digital and print PSAs, volunteer projects across 51 U.S. cities and a national moment of silence.
Approximately 50,000 volunteers are expected to pack 18 million meals as part of this year’s 9/11 Day service activities.
The campaign represents a profound shift from those first uncertain weeks of 2001.
Then, advertisers wondered how to convince Americans to start buying things again.
Now some of the strongest anniversary work asks them to give something instead.
Their time.
Their attention.
Their service.
Their empathy.
What advertising learned from September 11
Advertising exists to insert itself into culture.
September 11 taught the industry that sometimes doing so requires extraordinary restraint.
The strongest work over the past quarter-century has generally followed the same principles: put people ahead of products, acknowledge the gravity of the moment, avoid turning grief into promotional currency and give the audience something meaningful to do or feel.
That is why the image of Budweiser’s Clydesdales bowing still resonates.
Why “I Am an American” remains powerful.
Why American Express’s support for neighborhood businesses worked.
And why a mattress sale built around falling towers became infamous.
Twenty-five years ago, America stopped selling.
Advertising eventually returned.
But at its best, it returned with the understanding that sometimes the most powerful thing a brand can say is very little.
Reel 360 remembers.
Colin Costello is the West Coast Editor of Reel 360 News. Contact him at colin@reel360.com or follow him on LinkedIn.
