Tuesday’s ad is another oldie, based on the label, at least. I don’t know much about it either, but I love the association Bass is trying to make. While it’s obvious that they’re trying to evoke emotions of pride, it still comes off a little colonial and warlike. Of course, that may be because I live in a former colony. But with the tag line, “The Drink of the Empire,” I think I’m safe in saying the ad is somewhat imperial in its tone.
God save the queen!
It’s the same frisson the Brits get from a bottle of Samuel Adams Boston Lager 😛
They only colonized countries that didn’t have a flag….
“Your not a country, unless you have a flag. I claim this land for the Queen!”
– Eddie Izzard
Warlike and Imperial? It’s a beer ad and as such plays to the public sympathies of the day. I’d love to have tried a Bass when it really was an IPA and before it became the relatively insipid tipple it is today.
Then the “public sympathies of the day” were warlike and imperial. Three out of four of the inset drawings depict soldiers and military equipment. Can the word “empire” be used without suggesting imperialism? I don’t see how.
All four are military: an 18th century soldier and sailor, and the “present day” counterpart.
I think what Jim means is that it dates from a time before Empire was regarded as something to be ashamed of. And there are plenty of Brits today who’ll tell you it was a good thing: democracy, rule of law, the English language, and all that. The diamonds and slaves were just a handy bonus.
Plus, of course, they still have beers called things like “Spitfire” and “Lancaster Bomber”, ‘cos nothing evokes good times down the pub like industrial death machinery.
J
I actually thought my dissing today’s Bass was the controversial part of my submission!
Wrong-o, I guess.
My throwaway point at the outset was simply, let’s not put politics into ordinary stuff like Beer ads.
Do you like today’s Bass BTW?
Jim
Actually, I don’t think you can avoid politics in anything. The word, which comes from the Greek, of course, means essentially “pertaining to citizens.” Everything is political. Sure it’s “just an ordinary beer ad,” but that doesn’t mean there’s no politics in it. Whether conscious or unconscious, it’s just not possible to avoid them. The creative people who made this, and all, ads carefully choose images because of their underlying meaning and what they say to the consumer. They’re not chosen at random.
That being said, I didn’t intentionally try to bring up politics. While there are flat-earthers and Holocaust deniers, I’ve never heard anyone suggest that England wasn’t an empire or an imperial power. To me that’s not the least bit controversial. My characterization of the images of military personnel and weapons as “warlike” and saying England was an “empire,” an imperial nation, was simply an observation of what I believe to be facts. It was my analysis or belief that the advertisers chose them because they believed ordinary Englishmen at whatever time the ad was produced would make positive associations with those images and their product, Bass Ale. American beer companies play the patriot card all the time, too. I find that personally odd, which is more than likely why I mentioned it, but I didn’t see it as particularly controversial or uncommon until you took issue with my characterizations. Out of curiosity, what do those images and the word “empire” convey to you?
The last Bass I had was in Burton-on-Trent when I was there in 2007. It’s being brewed for some markets at Marston’s and I had some nearby there. It had been quite a while since I’d had any — it was an early favorite beer when I was a young adult — and it’s didn’t taste as I remembered it, but I put that down to just having a better palate now then when I was in my 20s. Who knows, but it seems unlikely it’s the same beer now that it was ten years ago, let alone thirty years ago when I drank it regularly in New York City.
J
Those images simply suggest to me the intent of the ad to play to the supposed sympathies of their intended customers, who they presumed would be sympathetic to pictures of soldiers in various uniforms over time and dispersed over the globe. The ad itself assumes the British Empire and it’s soldiers as well known and positively viewed by the ad’s audience and tries to gain sympathy for the beer by association. In short, it’s similar to a celebrity beer endorsement. I don’t see anything warlike in the soldier pics in the sense of glorifying or urging war; similarly I don’t see anything imperial in the sense of imperiousness, boastfulness or lording it over anyone in the use of the word empire in the ad. I guess I distinguish between the empire itself, which may have been imperious and warlike, and the ad itself, which as I see it is neither.
Cheers! Jim