Buzz, Light Beer

Happy summer, readers. We here at Drink Moxie are thrilled about the season because it's the perfect time to crack open a cold one. A cold Moxie, perhaps? Well yes, but occasionally something more potent is in order.

The Drink Moxie staff has a hard time saying no to a frosty brew, and Americans in general are no different. As I'm sure many of you know, despite the current tough economic times, beer sales are going strong. Not alcohol sales, mind you. Just beer. We don't seem to enjoy getting drunk on anything else.

Unfortunately, we tend to be a little out of touch with mainstream America when it comes to the type of beers we drink. We like the fancy stuff. Not talking about the so-called "superpremium" brands of Michelob and Rolling Rock mentioned in the above article. We're talking about imports, microbrews, Belgian-styles. Stuff that comes in a curvy glass with a stem. But in America, most people drink the big three. That would be Bud, Miller and Coors, right? Well, kind-of. Apparently here in the land of Big Cars, Big Houses, and Big People, we prefer the light variety of beers. It's probably the only "light" thing that we prefer. About half of beer sold in the US is light, and Bud Light, Miller Lite and Coors Light combined account for about 60% of light beer sales.

So what makes these three so popular with the American drunken public? It could have something to do with the advertising, but it's probably more about the quality of the product. Just kidding. Let's take a look at what their ad agencies are doing.

Miller Lite

We start with the first, the granddaddy of the mass-marketed light beers. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Miller Lite had it all. A best-selling product. A star-studded advertising campaign. A phonetic, easy-to-spell brand name. Not to mention one of the most brilliant and enduring taglines in advertising history: "Tastes Great, Less Filling" (thanks to McCann-Erickson). This was so ingrained into the popular culture that it took on a life of its own. One of my most vivid memories as a child is going down to the minor league ballpark and joining in as one half of the grandstand would shout "Tastes great!" and my responsibility was to join in the retort, "Less filling!" Aw, now I'm getting nostalgic. Let's take a look.



The campaign has changed many times over the years, but nothing as noteworthy has evolved, with the unfortunate exception of "Man Laws." They don't seem to be able to match the elegance and simplicity of the original. Just over the past two years, Miller has used Crispin Porter and Bogusky, replaced them with Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and replaced them in turn with DraftFCB out of Chicago. I'm not sure who's responsible for what's running now, but it seems like they're making a return to the "tastes great" approach (indeed, the commercial I just saw plays with the tagline, "Taste Greatness"). Moreover, since today's beer consumer is presumably more discerning, it's not sufficient just to say it tastes great. The audience seems to deserve a more elaborate explanation. Here's one approach.



Hm, I never thought about how "can taste" was affecting my beer, but now that I know, I'm glad the problem's been fixed. So our beer is no longer aluminum-contaminated, which is nice, but what about the beer itself? What makes it taste so, well, great? Here's a medley of more recent commercials, feel free to not watch all of them.



Ah, of course, it's the triple-hops brewing process. Hops, as beer connoisseurs know, is the fragrant plant that gives all beer its distinctive flavor. Odd that it took so long for brewers to figure out that if beer tastes good because of hops, then beer will taste great if you "hop" it three times. A cupcake tastes better with three layers of icing, doesn't it? Good thing the master brewers at Miller are on top of things.

Will this more sophisticated, dare I say intellectual approach put Miller Lite back on top of the light beer game? Where's the competition?

Coors Light

Now we look to the kid brother, which (as it is owned by the same company as Miller) is also managed by DraftFCB. Its ad history is less memorable to me, I vaguely remember times when Pete Coors explained where the water comes from and, of course, the embarrassing cultural phenomenon of "... and twins." What are they up to now?



This "cold-activated" idea seems to really have legs, since they recently introduced a cold-activated can as well. It's all part of Coors Light's guarantee that they have the coldest beer on the market, as they like to say, "Cold as the Rockies."

Now, people who are into "thinking" might wonder, doesn't the coldness of the beer really have nothing to do with the beer itself, but rather the medium within which the beer is stored? I'm no scientist, but I would have to imagine that if I put a Coors Light in the microwave and turned it on for three minutes, it would not be the "world's coldest beer." But oh, right, then the label wouldn't turn blue, and I would know not to drink it. Dodged a bullet there.

Perhaps I'm being glib, but as the linked article shows, the approach seems to be working as little Coors is starting to catch up to big brother Miller. It's as if the American consumer is saying, "screw taste, I just want my beer cold." That's all we ask for. Or is it? Could we possibly ask for less?

Bud Light

We now turn to the king, Bud Light, the top selling beer in America. Their campaign over the years has produced some funny stuff, up to and including its recent Emmy-winning "Swear Jar" spot. But overall it's been pretty generic, including the rather derivative and wordy slogan "Won't fill you up and never lets you down." The campaign they are currently running was started by RSCG out of Chicago, but was recently taken over by our friends at DDB. Let's take a gander.



If being generic is what has put Bud Light at the top, I don't see how this campaign could possibly fail. It takes the idea of "lowest common denominator" and somehow brings it a notch lower. Does it taste good? Nope. Is it cold? Well, not necessarily. But it's drinkable. They are literally telling us that we should drink it because it is technically possible to do so. There's really not much else to say.

So the choice is yours, readers. How do you like your light beer? Tasty? Cold? Or just drinkable? Because you can't have all three. Of course, these three brands are really just reinforcing what most of us know about light beer, which is that it's weak, and it will get you buzzed. The creative team's job is to take that message and re-brand it, which they've successfully been able to do, from "Tastes Great, Less Filling" to "Drinkability," because we Americans just can't seem to get enough of the stuff, even when we can't afford anything else.

And now, you can get it with the taste of lime! But that's a discussion for another time.

Fast Friends, Fast Food

This is one of those rare times when we venture out of the world of television to look at what other methods are being employed by advertisers to teach us about their products, and about ourselves.

As our readers know, we here at Drink Moxie are always catching trends at the height of their popularity. Today, we talk about the recent promotion, only a few months old now, from the folks at Burger King by way of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, offering a free Whopper for deleting ten of your Facebook friends (as described in this New York Times article).

As Douglas Quenqua explains, the promotion was brought to a premature conclusion when it was determined that the promotion was in violation of Facebook's policies – specifically, the policy by which users can remove a "friend" without notifying the "friend" who is being unilaterally rejected. But the more interesting question is whether the well-meaning folks at BK/CP&B were breaching our social mores in some greater way, stretching the unwritten social contract between advertiser and advertisee a little too far for comfort.

There's always a level of risk when a brand implicitly touts itself as "the official brand of something," but it can certainly be an effective approach if done smartly. We showed in a previous post how Dunkin' Donuts has successfully, but a little ironically, branded itself as the official sponsor of such everyday annoyances as being late to work and walking across hot sand. The associations aren't necessarily positive, but they're things we can relate to. Some commercials have taken it even further, such as DirecTV, which gave a somewhat sardonic demonstration of how their product can be useful during a bank robbery. (It's a nice spot, featuring Dule Hill and Alan Tudyk – but we're not here to rate commercials). The spot doesn't rub people the wrong way, partly because most people have not been a hostage in a bank robbery and thus can see the humor in it. People who have been taken hostage in a bank robbery might not find the spot so amusing.

Can it go too far? Of course. You wouldn't want your brand to be something people associate with beating one's wife, destructive wildfires, or getting cancer – all things that many people have to cope with on a regular basis, but not anything that people would feel comfortable associating with a consumer product. Between being late for work and getting cancer, there is a gray area.

So where does deleting friends from Facebook fall? Clearly it's something that people sometimes have to do. Whether or not people enjoy doing it is a matter of taste and personality. Now, as far as advertising goes, we all know that the goal is to give the impression that a brand or a product will fit comfortably into the lifestyle they enjoy, or possibly the lifestyle they wish they had. Promotions, in that sense, are typically about rewarding people for something they might already enjoy doing, in other to get people to associate their product with that activity. Hardly ever is a promotion about getting consumers to do something they don't want to do in exchange for the reward. So the CP&B folks were presumably looking, with this promotion, to reach out to customers who already feel that they have too many Facebook friends and would maybe like to have fewer of them. How many people fit this demographic? And are those people now more likely to eat more Whoppers?

BK even takes it a step further as they imagine themselves as social do-gooders pushing back against the over-inundation of personal information sharing that has has been born of the Facebook era. As BK's vice president puts it in the article:

Do you really want to have all these people knowing what you’re up to and what you’re interested in? We wanted to be part of that conversation and part of that solution, and ‘Whopper Sacrifice’ was born.

It's not very unusual, in this day and age, for a company to associate itself with a social movement (note the RED campaign, which we may explore later). Obviously you have to pick your causes carefully. Climate change, AIDS, both are problems that people would love to be the solution to, and if it gets them a stylish cell phone or t-shirt, then you better believe people will get behind it. Fighting the erosion of personal privacy via social networking websites for a hamburger? Hmm. Since people themselves seem to be driving the trend (I suppose all social problems are people-driven, but in this case it seems more willingly people-driven than others), it may be hard to get people behind the cause. But maybe that's the whole point – it's more of an ironic statement than a real social mission, when you consider the dubiousness of the cause together with the triviality of the reward.

This irony might be lost on some people. Those who "get it" may laugh and gain a new appreciation for Burger King as being hip to modern trends and having a sophisticated sense of humor about them. Other people – that is, other Facebook users, who are presumably not completely unsavvy – may take it more seriously. I can imagine people being troubled by the moral quandary between maintaining a manageable level of privacy and considering the feelings of people who have some real emotional investment in a "friend" connection. I can also imagine that people who are grappling with this question may find it rather insulting for a brand to suggest that dangling a free hamburger would make the quandary easier to resolve. You could label these people as oversensitive, but the official action taken by Facebook suggests that it's not a trivial issue for many of its users.

For a brand, I suppose the alternative to getting mixed up in these social issues is to just show things that are either so innocent or so absurd that they stay clear of any moral gray areas, and do not cause the customer to question their own sense of social propriety. This seems to be the competition's approach.



Happy Lent, everyone!

The Professionals Respond Again

There will be more of our stimulating analysis to come, but for now I'd like to direct your attention to the folks at the New York Times, who once again seem to be picking up on our latest posts. Or at least I'd like to think so. Enjoy.

Broadcast TV Faces Struggle to Stay Viable

The Medium Is the Soup Commercial

What Are We Going to Do Tonight, Hulu?

Well readers, it's finally happened. We went to a commercial website in order to view an advertisement for that same website, whose business it is to host videos, like the one below, supported by advertisements, like the one below. TV advertising has finally gone fractal.



This of course was shown during the Super Bowl, where it first caught our attention. On the face of it, it's a pretty good commercial. Designed to appeal to a sophisticated audience of web-savvy types, who will appreciate the ironic message that this product is a subversive attempt to exploit its own consumers, as well as the style of a TV star roughly approximating the character he plays on a show known to appeal to viewers with a sophisticated sense of humor (the show that gets the Emmys, while Two and a Half Men gets the audience).

But there are a couple issues here that give us pause. First of all, they are venturing into typically dangerous waters with the idea that they are advertising a product that will cause its users harm. It makes me think of Don Draper on Mad Men chastising his subordinates for suggesting that they could use the image of cigarettes as "toxic" as a subversive way to advertise the product. "Advertising is based on one thing: happiness," not making people feel self-conscious about the product they're using. Another Draperism that comes to mind is, "There has to be advertising for people don't have a sense of humor."

But are these things really a problem? Is anyone under the illusion that this commercial will grow the audience of people who don't already know about Hulu? Will it give potential new viewers an understanding or appreciation for the material Hulu offers? Or does it not matter, since the people who don't get the commercial won't be sophisticated enough to get into Hulu anyway? (Or possibly, because they aren't likely to have jobs that allow them to sit around and watch streaming video off the web all day?) I get the sense that this is one of those preaching-to-the-converted commercials meant to instill pride in those who already buy the product – angling for the "I use this product because the people who make it get me" effect. The follow-up to one of the above Draperisms is apropos: "It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is OK." In this case, the billboard says, "If you spend all your time on Hulu, you don't have to be self-conscious about being a brainless couch potato – because we've turned that whole idea into a big joke."

But there's another catch here. Because we're looking at a TV advertisement for something that, in some ways, intends to replace television as we know it. So why are they running this ad on TV at all?

Well, not so fast there. It's debatable whether Hulu is really the end of television. It could represent the end of simultaneous television as a medium, but it could also represent the resurgence of television as an art form. Our friend Randall Stross of the New York Times reminds us that while online news has been killing the newspaper business, sites like YouTube have only helped to make television stronger. In some very fundamental ways, there's little difference between the TV screen and the computer screen, and very soon they could be one and the same. He also points out that advertising for online video has still not caught up to television – although Mad Men reminds us of a time when, despite a large number of households watching television, TV advertising was still considered subordinate to newspapers, signs and billboards.

For now, we have to wait and see how pervasive the Hulu culture becomes, whether it will remain a niche audience of grad students and semi-professional bloggers, or if it will "take over the world" as it self-satirically promises to do. In the meantime we get to see more of our favorite stars of critically-acclaimed but ratings-averse shows promoting this off-beat campaign.



Enjoy, we shall.

Product Placement: The Next Generation

Does anyone think it's becoming harder to distinguish content from advertising on TV? Ha! Those of you who read this regularly know that's a trick question – advertising is content, and vice versa. But still, new areas of convergence seem to be manifesting themselves in more interesting, more self-conscious ways.

Our friends at a subsidiary of the Sheinhardt Wig Company called NBC-Universal seem to be leading the way in advertising convergence, if not in ratings. At some point last year, NBC lunged into product placement with gusto, apparently deciding that if they couldn't do it subtly, they could do it satirically. A kind soul on YouTube has saved us the trouble of having to dig up a lot of examples by putting together this montage of 30 Rock making fun of selling out while selling out. (I'm pretty sure these aren't the only examples, and others are to be found throughout NBC's primetime lineup.)



Elsewhere in the building, the folks at Saturday Night Live have been doing some interesting experiments. I can just imagine the day that an exec (maybe Lorne Michaels, or maybe one of the mad men at the Arnell Group) mused "Commercial ads are about 30-60 seconds, and we have video sketches that are about 30-60 seconds ... hmm ..."

To provide some context for non-regular SNL viewers, here is one of the video sketches we've seen a lot of lately.



On the January 31 show, I was not surprised to see a "MacGruber" sketch appear, but I was a little surprised when it appeared during the first commercial break – preceded and followed by actual commercials. Not typically the way they package their sketches, but nothing to write home about. After I saw another one, I started to wonder if I was seeing a sketch at all ...



These ads ran again during the Super Bowl, confirming in fact that they could be called "ads" and not just "sketches with product placement". But can they be both?

For another example, some of you may have noticed the brilliant/tasteless (depending on your viewpoint) "Whopper Virgins" campaign hurled our way by Crispin Porter & Bogusky. Here's a taste.



In one of SNL's episodes late last year, we were treated to this "parody":



So what exactly did we just see here? Given the length of the segment, you'd have to think it was a sketch. But the Burger King name and logo are clearly prominent, as is the name "Whopper". I'll leave it to you to decide.

So now to the question we always ask: Why? What makes the folks at 30 Rockefeller so gung-ho about product placement? Were they desperate for more ad revenue? Are they trying out a new policy of "give us your ad money and we'll throw in the creative work for free"? If so, are the creative people on these shows relishing the opportunity to skewer the brands they are simultaneously hawking, or do they resent this abuse of their talents? And how do the brands, or their surrogate ad agencies, feel about being parodied? Do they get to have a say in how they are portrayed, or do they not care as long as the logo is in the shot?

I suppose an intellectual-type (like the kind who watch NBC shows) might find this very forward-thinking. In the age of Tivo, Hulu, and whatever the next TV-watching innovation will be called (perhaps Loza or Poho?) commercials are being marginalized as people demand, and obtain, the ability to get their entertainment more-or-less immediately without interruptions. Moreover, the sophisticated couch potato of the future is not flipping through channels, but browsing links and watching videos embedded in other pages. In that respect, I guess I'm playing right into their hands. In fact, not only have I been helping to advertise the products for free (I do that in every post), I've also been advertising for Hulu, the site that implicitly promises to take over TV as we know it, or at least some part of its audience, in the future. (More about Hulu in a future post.)

Is this really the future of TV? Is it really the future of advertising? Is NBC, which isn't making any money now, shrewdly making a downpayment on something that will pay dividends in the future, or are they selling out just to stay afloat? Are other studios and networks going to follow their lead? Remember that the main perpetrators here are shows that are produced and aired by the same company, an increasing rarity in the entertainment world. Will the integration of content and advertising lead to future integration of talent, production and distribution? Are we on our way back to NBC's Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle?

I think that may be a stretch. But kudos to NBC for taking a step up, even if they happen to be standing on a downward-moving escalator.

20-Yard Recession

Welcome to the first Drink Moxie of 2009 and the first of the Obama administration. It's a new world with new hopes and possibilities, or at least it was before we all realized that the money we thought we had didn't really exist. I apologize for the long lapse since the last posting, but apparently the recession has hit us at Drink Moxie as hard as it's hit everyone else. However, I can give you my personal assurance that as long as we keep buying products, and as long as our self-image is tied inexorably to how we feel about the products we buy, and as long as companies understand that and continue to both reflect and shape our culture through the use of advertising, we will be there.

Once again we begin our year by looking at the Super Bowl, that most American of advertising festivals. Every year I like to reflect a bit on what Super Bowl commercials mean, why the nation comes together at this particular time every year in celebration of our national brands. Yes, I'm aware that there is football involved, and that regardless of the tradition, it would still be an advertising extravaganza by virtue of the huge audience that is actually watching the game. But still. As an advertising opportunity, the timing just doesn't make sense. The Super Bowl comes a month after the holiday season, when no one is really buying anything. I was recently watching some stuff on DVR from back in December, 2008, and remarking at how quickly I had forgotten about the "Buy This! Now! Please?" attitude that characterized commercials around that time. Maybe that's why we at Drink Moxie weren't so interested in writing about commercials at the time ‒ they were just too overtly focused on selling products. Super Bowl commercials aren't trying to sell anything. They're doing what commercials ought to be doing, manipulating the perceptions of our lifestyles and defining our culture in such a way that their brands fit within it. There's something pure about it.

And that brings us back to the recession. If there were ever a time when commercials should have less to do with selling anything, now is that time. People are not buying, and they're not just not buying, they are afraid to want to buy for fear of looking greedy to all the other people who aren't buying. Buyers are not buying so much that the sellers are not selling, leading to the downward spiral we find ourselves in. And yet in light of this reality, our major brands took their responsibility seriously and mounted an advertising display in grand American bootstrap-oriented fashion. How did they do this? Perhaps taking a cue from our intrepid new President, they put their focus on conservation ‒ saving money while reducing our dependence on foreign brands. Indeed, they seemed to be abiding by the old "Three R's" of living green.

Reduce

You can't get much greener than Saatchi & Saatchi's offering for Miller High Life, part of its new campaign that self-consciously stresses the image of working-class sophistication that characterizes the "Champagne of Beers."



There was general agreement among the Drink Moxie personnel that this spot was the winner in the "doing less with more" category. Granted, it's not as if they just concentrated all their advertising effort into one second. They had run ads leading up to the Super Bowl explaining how they were going to run a one-second ad, ensuring that the novelty would not be lost on the viewing public, who might otherwise confuse it with a broadcasting mistake. Indeed, they did a nice job of weaving together the campaign's prior focus on establishing High Life as the low-brow high-brau with the economic realities that are facing the company and its customers alike (SAB Miller, I believe, is not doing all that bad). Moreover, as with most campaigns, it goes beyond the airwaves with a special website at www.1secondad.com where viewers can see alternate versions of the spot, making it possibly the first commercial-extension web page actually worth visiting.

But what really gave the spot its added value was the buzz. Its strategic placement right at the end of halftime ensured an entire half worth of discussing, "What happened to that one-second ad? Did we miss it?" In fact, we at Drink Moxie were busy talking about it when it unexpectedly aired, which meant that we had to rewind the DVR to watch it again, and a few more times just to get the full effect. Talk about leveraging existing resources to their maximum potential. If the new stimulus package can have the same multiplier effects as this commercial, we ought to be in pretty good shape.

Reuse

Of course if you can't come up with a good new money-saving idea, you can always just dust off some old material that worked for you before. That was Coke's approach.



So they played a little twist at the end, as a way of redirecting the focus onto Coke Zero, a product whose campaign (by Crispin Porter + Bogusky) centers around how it's pretty much exactly like classic Coke, except with no calories. I think this one explains itself. If it doesn't, you probably haven't seen this:



Recycle

Most advertisers, as tends to be the habit, fell back to the easiest but decidedly least "green" conservation approach of recycling old material into a new product. Bud Light (DDB Worldwide), SoBe (Arnell Group), E*TRADE (Grey New York) and many more all found new ways to repackage material from past campaigns. Doritos (Goodby Silverstein & Partners) went to the tried-and-true approach of injuring a gentleman with a strike to the crotch, a device so common there should be a word for it (groinecdoche?). I won't show them because they're not really worth showing. CareerBuilder.com (with Wieden + Kennedy) generated some more of its typical "how do you know it's time for a new job" material, nothing new but something that perhaps resonates a bit more with today's audience. The material seemed so ripe for recycling that Monster.com (which apparently does its own ad work, if you can call it that) used it too, resulting in a nice comedic effect but a further blurring of the difference between the two major competitors in the online job-search business.



Now, we here at Drink Moxie aren't the first to notice this year's trend towards recycled advertising, as seen in the New York Times' recap by Stuart Elliott. But Elliott seems to frame this in a disparaging way, perhaps implying that in this time of great need and despair, we the American people deserve more from our brands at a time like this. I see it differently. Popular advertising isn't just our bread and circus, a one-way stream of eye candy that entertains one part of our brain while the other parts are being brainwashed into spending money. Popular advertising is a dialogue that responds to how we see ourselves and our condition, and reassures us that the companies that make our lifestyles possible understand us. Advertisers need to show that they feel our pain, as better explained in Elliott's pre-Game analysis, and I think that's a good thing.

Plus, on the subject of feeling our pain, if the material we saw in Super Bowl commercials weren't so predictable and reassuring, how could we possibly have commercials like this a week later?



To be fair, there were some interesting new trends on display at Super Bowl XLIII, and surely we will be mining it for things to talk about in the coming weeks. So let's hang in there for another year. After all, with a little help and a cold Moxie, we made it through the Great Depression. Surely we'll make it through this one too.

Vote or Die

Tomorrow is election day, and as we prepare for this year's historic election (Isn't it funny how events can be "historic" before they even occur?) we here at Drink Moxie would like to reflect on the Presidential campaign not by looking at this year's ads, but by going back to a classic ad. Actually, the classic ad, the one that started it all, that made us believe in the power of politics, the power of television, and that continues to remind us all what's at stake.

Many of you have probably seen this before. If you haven't, first of all shame on you, secondly, prepare to be enfranchised:



"Daisy," part of Johnson's 1964 campaign, was produced by DDB and its creation is credited to Tony Schwartz, an audio producer turned ad man who got his start working on baby powder commercials. (Thank you, Wikipedia.) He continued to work on a number of campaigns for other prominent Democratic candidates. He died earlier this year.

Despite being arguably the most famous political advertisement of all time, "Daisy" only aired once as a commercial. The public outrage that ensued ensured that the campaign would not run it again. But the number of times it was replayed on the news, other programs, or in private screenings (even before the YouTube era) is hard to estimate. Talk about your free advertising.

Also, despite the popular perception that this was the original "negative ad," it never even mentions the name of the opposing candidate, gives any kind of personal information about him, or even makes any specific comment about his character. (For the historically challenged, the 1964 Republican opponent was Barry Goldwater.) In his New York Times obituary, Schwartz is quoted as having said of the ad, "Frankly, I think it was the most positive commercial ever made." After all, the message simply boiled down to Lyndon Johnson encouraging people to get out and vote.

How far have we come in political advertising since 1964? Feel free to post your favorite ad from this election year or elections past (Presidential or otherwise - I am personally enamored of local races, and ballot initiatives are tops). But first, assuming you're a US Citizen and not a convicted felon (admittedly a category within which not all of my readers fall), be sure to vote.

The stakes are too high for you to stay home.