Thursday’s ad is from 1940 and is for Budweiser. The ad’s tagline is “Their Hero Arrives on the Next Bus,” and shows two young children standing by a fence eagerly awaiting the arrival of their “daddy” home from work. Read the ad copy on this one, it’s pretty hilarious. And check out at the bottom their “Make This Test” in the center box. “Drink Budweiser for five days. On the sixth day, try to drink a sweet beer. You will want Budweiser’s flavor thereafter.” Or maybe not.
Wedneday’s ad is for Baltimore’s National Bohemian Light Beer. It ran in Life magazine in 1959. The tagline is a mouthfull: “From Chesapeake Bay land of pleasant we bring you this quality beer.” And from the insets at the bottom, the Chesapeake Bay area was also the “land of fun,” the “land of history,” and the “land of good food.”
Tuesday’s ad is for Canada’s Labatt’s 50 Ale, which was “Canada’s fastest growing ale because it has “spirit.” I’m not even sure what that means. Perhaps you get “spirit” by sailing? I’m not sure what this was done, it has a 1950s look and the illustration is great, I just don’t get the connection.
Monday’s ad is one of the first advertising canned beers, in honor of the anniversary of the first beer can being sold today in 1935. It’s for Krueger’s Cream Ale, the first beer to be sold in a can. They tested the package in Richmond, Virginia, far from their native New Jersey in case the test went poorly to avoid any damage to the brand in their home market.
Our 52nd Guinness poster by John Gilroy shows a farm scene with bossy racing the farmer to the tractor, where a Guinness bottle and pint glass is there for the taking. It uses the tagline “My Goodness My Guinness.”
Friday’s ad is for Miller High Life from 1956, displaying a busy, chaotic mess of images including a high life bottle being poured into what looks like a ceramic stein. Then there’s a loaf of a bread and summer sausage with a knife to cut it and napkins (one red and one with a checkerboard pattern) to keep one’s hands clean along with a large pipe and a sculpture of a rooster sitting on a beer keg in the background. With the high life logo hanging in the background, this as just seems way too busy. Sorry for the bad pub, but for me, that’s not in good taste.
Anheuser-Busch traditionally pulls out all the tops for the Super Bowl, one of the most-watched television events of the year, especially for their core demographic. And that looks to be true for this year’s game, as well. But according to a report from Advertising Age yesterday, they’ll be trying something new this year.
The biggest overall change is that “instead of running nine ads for a total of five minutes, as it did last year, A-B will air five ads that run over three-and-a-half minutes.” The ads themselves will be similar to past efforts. But 2011 will mark the first time they’ve deviated from their core brands of Budweiser and Bud Light. One of their spots, a 60-second ad, will be for the uninspired Belgian lager Stella Artois under the banner of a new campaign, “She is a thing of beauty.”
I’m fairly certain this isn’t the ad they’ll be running, but this one was supposedly directed by Wes Anderson and Sophia Coppola.
Despite the Marin Institute’s incessant complaining about alcohol advertising during the Super Bowl — oh, the horror, why won’t anyone think of the kiddies? — of the 28 planned advertisers, only one is an alcohol producer, Anheuser-Busch InBev. So not only are they misplaced about who watches the Super Bowl, but seeing as a mere 3.5% — exactly one — of the advertisers are alcohol producers it hardly seems worth all the hue and cry they’ve raised. Of the 3-4 hours of the game, just 3-1/2 minutes are taken up by beer ads, representing less than 2% to under 1.5%, depending on how long the game ultimately runs. Even at that, it assumes anyone watching would be glued the set the entire time, a dubious proposition at best, especially applied to children. But the Marin Institute won’t be happy until they’ve “freed the bowl” from even those three and half minutes.
Personally, I’m looking forward to this year’s Super Bowl, especially if my beloved Packers manage to win on Sunday. It’s been more then a decade since I’ve actually cared about who wins the game, it would sure be nice to have someone to root for this year.
Thursday’s ad is for Blatz Pilsener Beer from 1944, displaying a hunting motif to go with the cheesy ad copy, “The End of the Hunt For Good Taste.”
Wednesday’s ad is for Budweiser from 1962, showing the apparently unusual sight of men in the kitchen. Oh, but drinking beer there makes it okay. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t believe this foursome is going to be able to solve all the world’s problems, as the ad copy suggests.
I need to tread lightly here, as my own wife is a blonde. Two new television commercials by Atlanta’s Red Brick Brewing play on the stereotype of dumb blondes. Funny or insensitive, I’m staying out of it.