Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #3656: Bubba Smith For Miller Lite

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Wedesday’s ad is for “Miller Lite,” from 1978. This ad was made for the Miller Brewing Co., and was part of their long-running “Tastes Great!…Less Filling!” advertising campaign. It was created in 1973 by the McCann-Erickson Worldwide ad agency and was ranked by Advertising Age magazine as the eighth best advertising campaign in history. They were primarily television commercials but they did create print ads to support the TV spots. They began with a trend of using former athletes along with a few notable celebrities that continued throughout the campaign. This one features former football defensive end Bubba Smith.

Beer In Ads #3655: John Madden For Miller Lite

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Tuesday’s ad is for “Miller Lite,” from 1985. This ad was made for the Miller Brewing Co., and was part of their long-running “Tastes Great!…Less Filling!” advertising campaign. It was created in 1973 by the McCann-Erickson Worldwide ad agency and was ranked by Advertising Age magazine as the eighth best advertising campaign in history. They were primarily television commercials but they did create print ads to support the TV spots. They began with a trend of using former athletes along with a few notable celebrities that continued throughout the campaign. This one features former football coach John Madden.

Beer In Ads #3654: Matt Snell For Miller Lite

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Monday’s ad is for “Miller Lite,” from 1978. This ad was made for the Miller Brewing Co., and was part of their long-running “Tastes Great!…Less Filling!” advertising campaign. It was created in 1973 by the McCann-Erickson Worldwide ad agency and was ranked by Advertising Age magazine as the eighth best advertising campaign in history. They were primarily television commercials but they did create print ads to support the TV spots. The very first one featured former New York Jets running back Matt Snell, which began the trend of using former athletes along with a few notable celebrities that continued throughout the campaign. While Snell was in the first TV spot, I couldn’t find a print one apart from this later one that ran in a college newspaper.

Below is the very first Miller Lite ad from the Taste Great, Less Filling campaign.

Beer In Ads #3044: Uncle Sam Wants Your Cans

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Thursday’s 4th of July ad is for Miller High Life, from 1974. From the late 1800s until the 1960s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. But because today is American Independence Day, I thought I should share an ad from an American brewery. This poster was made for Miller Brewing Co., and the image of Uncle Sam holding a can High Life is just a detail from a poster created to promote recycling of their beer cans at the height of the Ecology movement in the 1970s. But the image is pretty cool, although I haven’t been able to figure out who the artist was that made it.

Miller-1974-uncle-sam-detail

Below is most of the entire poster, from an old eBay listing and it appears they were focusing on three months at the end of 1974, September through November, with dates when they wanted people to “Join the Miller Pick-Em Up” campaign, presumably to stop littering, at least of their beer cans.

Miller-1974-uncle-sam

Beer In Ads #2867: Double-Barreled Pleasure!

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Thursday’s ad is for Miller Brewing, from 1956. This ad features another hunting scene, with the hunter taking aim at what looks to be ducks flying away from him. But the cooked bird on the table below certainly looks like a turkey to me, that or certainly the largest duck I’ve ever seen. Also, take a look at the top of the foam on the beer glass. Does it look like there’s a subtle face there?

Miller-1956-turkey

Beer In Ads #2866: Enjoy Life Bowling

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Wednesday’s ad is for Miller Brewing, from 1957. This ad features another close-up illustration of a man holding a pilsner glass and staring at it lovingly. He also has a lapel pin with a bowling ball and a pin on it, so he’s clearly a bowler, in case the trophy, ball and pins below didn’t give it away. The tagline is again “I’m glad they still brew a beer like this!”

Miller-1957-bowling