Sunday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.
In this ad, a three-panel format, an unhappy-looking maid holds a dirty mop and frown into the camera. In the next panel, the frown is still there, but now she’s also holding a mug of Heineken. After drinking some of the beer, she’s been completely transformed in the final panel. Now she’s smiling, dressed in a bright yellow (beer-colored?) suit. She still has the remaining beer in her hand, but the mop has been replaced with a microphone. Judging from the new tagline, I believe she’ll be singing the Cab Calloway classic Hi-De-Ho.
