Real Men of Genius is a popular long-running humorous series of one-minute-long American radio advertisements for Bud Light beer created by Bob Winter, a copywriter at DDB Chicago. Each sixty-second ad pays mock tribute to an "unsung hero". The series began in 1999 and was originally called Real American Heroes. The name was changed after the 9/11 attacks, as Anheuser-Busch felt that they could not morally continue to use the term "hero" in that context after so many people had performed what many felt to be genuine acts of heroism. As of 2006, over 100 installments in the series have been produced. Winter's campaign has since become the most award-winning radio campaign in the history of advertising. Television versions have also been produced of some of these spots beginning in 2003. The first two TV versions were "Mr. Footlong Hot Dog Inventor" and "Mr. Really Bad Toupee Wearer".



The ads feature a somber-but-sarcastic announcer (Pete Stacker) and an unctuous rock singer who echoes the announcer's sentiments over schmaltzy "dramatic" piano music. The rock singer's vocals are by original Survivor lead singer David Bickler (who oddly enough met Survivor co-founder Jim Peterik while doing commercial jingles in the mid 1970s) and is known for such songs as Eye Of The Tiger, Poor Man's Son, Caught In The Game, American Heartbeat & Rebel Girl. The music, designed to spoof the 1980s power ballad and 1980s advertising, was composed by Sam Struyk and Sandy Torano at Scandal Music, Chicago. A female gospel-style chorus is also heard in many of the ads.

The popularity of the series, which is seen as a parody of 1980s beer advertising (including Budweiser's own from that era), led to many of the commercials being traded on peer to peer file sharing networks.