Monday’s ad is another one for Anheuser-Busch’s “Malt-Nutrine,” this one from 1911. This is another ad for A-B’s non-alcoholic health drink, marketed with snake-oil salesman enthusiasm. “The Daughters of the Farm” continues that tradition with claims that everyone living in rural America are “splendid examples of health and vigor” while the urban among us are “often deprived of outdoor exercise and invigorating country air.” Oh, the humanity!
Sunday’s ad is for Anheuser-Busch’s “Malt-Nutrine,” from 1909. This is another ad for A-B’s non-alcoholic health drink, marketed with snake-oil salesman enthusiasm. “Life-Giving American Barley contains more blood-making properties than any other growth of the soil.” But wait there’s more. “Every drop of Anheuser-Busch’s Malt-Nutrine fairly bubbles and seethes with the life of mother nature’s electrifying earth — the creamy nutriment of ripened barley — the aromatic tonic of Bohemian hops — the vivifying breezes of country air — the warmth of the sun and the blessings of the gentle rains — all instilled into a living liquid food.” Damn, who wouldn’t want to drink that.
Saturday’s ad is for Guinness, an ad in the design stages that never was used, but was created in late 1944, sometime after the death of the artist that inspired it, Piet Mondrian , who died February 1, 1944. Mondrian was also born today in 1899, which is why I chose this ad for today. This is one of the “lost Guinness ads” that Martyn Cornell wrote about last year in More great lost Guinness art: new evidence for the genius of Gilroy. The Gilroy he’s referring to is artist John Gilroy, who created most of the iconic characters Guinness used in their advertising, such as the Toucan, the Zookeeper and all of the rest. This one is part of a large stash that mysteriously disappeared in 1971 and then reappeared in America decades later just in time to net whoever absconded with the art millions of dollars. As part of the “lost” unused pieces, Gilroy created a series of ads paying homage to great art masterpieces by Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Picasso, Vermeer and others. This one is a beautifully conceived work that is at once recognizable as being in the style of Mondrian but also cleverly works into the design a pint of stout. It’s shame the series was never finished or green lit.
Friday’s ad is still another one for Budweiser, again from 1916. This is one is part of a series from the same year, with the two from the previous days being the three I know about. This one has the headline “Honored in Its Home Town and Famed the World Over.” The copy mentions that the “Saazer Hop Flavor” was “exclusive,” which seems very strange. And for that matter, when did we stop calling them “Saazer” and drop the “-er?” Like all of the ads, it ends with “Budweiser Means Moderation.”
Thursday’s ad is for another one for Budweiser, also from 1916. It seems like this is part of a series from the same year. This one has the great headline “The Better the Hops the Better the Beer Flavor.” Like yesterday’s ad, the parting shot is “Budweiser Means Moderation,” which was part of a strategy to convince people that beer should be spared that the brewing industry adopted far too late to stop the 18th Amendment from being ratified, establishing prohibition in 1920. Needless to say, it was too little, too late, but it’s a cool ad.
Wednesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1916. There’s some great copy on this ad, beginning with “Every Glass a Handful of Health.” According to the ad, “Each drop of Budweiser is alive and sparkling with the vital energy of Northern Barley and the tonic vigor of Saazer Hops.” Apparently it’s also the “unchallenged sovereign of bottled beers,” which must have been a precursor to A-B declaring themselves the king of beers.
Tuesday’s ad is for the Green Tree Brewery of St. Louis, and specifically their Buck Beer — apparently a bock — from 1906. Weird that they called it “buck” but then again perhaps they were thinking ahead and believed it was be easier to own or trademark the name which I confess I didn’t even notice was buck when I first looked at this ad.
Monday’s ad is for Heineken, from, I think, the early 1990s. I confess I don’t remember this ad campaign from Heineken, but I recently discovered that they had a reasonably long-running series of ads with the tagline “When You make a great beer, you don’t have to make a great fuss.” They’re all minimalist in design with witty text and that fussy tagline. I haven’t been able to find a lot of specifics about the campaign, apart from a few suggestions that it may not have run in the United States. But it’s pretty funny in the context of the ABI Super Bowl ad that accused craft beer drinkers of being to fussy about their beer.
Sunday’s ad is for the British ad campaign “Beer is Best,” from 1938. Part of “A Calendar of British Beer” from that year, March features a wonderful illustration of a farmer sowing his field with barley, and the text explains that this is the month for it, with some statistics of how much of the grain it takes each year to create all of England’s beer. “All the year round. Beer is Best.” Happy March.
Saturday’s ad is for Anheuser-Busch, from 1892. Apparently shortly after the competition of a new brewhouse in St. Louis, they celebrated by sponsoring “pen and sunlight sketches of Omaha and environs” with this ad. One curious feature of the otherwise simple image ad, is this line. “No Corn or Corn Preparations are used in the manufacture of Anheuser-Busch beer. It is, therefore, the highest-priced by the most wholesome and really the least expensive for its superior quality.” Funny they didn’t mention rice.
