Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Hello, Is It Beer You’re Looking For?

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First Willie Nelson did ads for Taco Bell to pay his back taxes, and now Lionel Richie is apparently doing the same thing, crooning a version of his hit song “Hello, Is It Me You’re Looking For” to pay the $1.1 million he owes in back taxes to the IRS. The ad itself is pretty funny, a man in searching his refrigerator, presumably looking for a beer, when we here Richie singing his song, and then the man sees him singing through the back of the refrigerator. Cut to the inside of the icebox, and there’s Lionel Richie, dressed in white, sitting a white piano in an all-white room.
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He stops playing long enough to fill a pint glass of beer using the new Tap King dispenser from the Lion Nathan Brewery. Richie reportedly was paid $1.5 million for the ad, which should get him out of hot water with the taxman. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if he’d actually sung “hello, is it beer you’re looking for?”

If the ad won’t play (the embed code has been giving me error messages off and on), try this link here or watch it on AdWeek or Australia’s newspaper The Age.

Beer In Ads #916: Tally Ho

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Monday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1949. Part of Bud’s long-running “There’s nothing like it” series, but is odd for depicting a more traditionally English fox and hounds hunt, which I suspect was not part of ordinary life for most, if even many, Americans in late forties. More curious still, is in the text at the bottom it reads: “There’s more Budweiser now — and there will be still more as our expansion program continues.” That seems like an odd message to be telling consumers, but maybe this ad was intended for a narrower audience.

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Beer In Ads #915: That Man — He’s Done It Again!

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Friday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1950. In the wonderful illustration, it appears that a woman has discovered that her husband has emptied the refrigerator of food and filled it with Schlitz beer. Surveying the scene with a new bag of groceries on the table, not to mention other food scattered about the kitchen, all she can do is exclaim. “That Man — He’s Done It Again!”

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Beer In Ads #911: Is This Something Special?

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Monday’s ad is for Ballantine Ale, from the 1950s, I believe. To the question “Is This Something Special?” a couple of men sitting on a sofa at a dinner party, the other answers. “It certainly is … that’s Ballantine Ale.” I sure miss dressing up every time a few friends come over for a beer. Oh, wait. That never happened. But that would be special, wouldn’t it.

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Beer In Ads #910: The Christening of Kip’s Bay

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Friday’s ad is for Knickerbocker beer, from 1953. It’s number 5 in a series, although I’ve only seen two of them so far, and I don’t know how many are in the series of ads. The ones I’ve seen depict scenes from the history of New York. This fifth one is about the Christening of Kip’s Bay, and the art for the ad was painted by Lumen Martin Winter. “Kips Bay was an inlet of the East River running from what is now 32nd Street to 37th Street.” According to Wikipedia:

Kips Bay was the site of the Landing at Kip’s Bay (September 15, 1776), an episode of the American Revolutionary War and part of the New York and New Jersey campaign. About 4,000 British Army troops under General William Howe landed at Kips Bay on September 15, 1776, near what is now the foot of East 33rd Street. Howe’s forces defeated about 500 American militiamen commanded by Colonel William Douglas. The American forces immediately retreated and the British occupied New York City soon afterward.

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