The Death of the Beer Ad?

Last week, a friend texted to ask about a clue to one answer in a crossword puzzle. It was something like “evil penguin beer ad.” I asked the little librarian in my brain to root around the archives to see what he could retrieve, and eventually I remembered the campaign—though not the beer nor era. No matter, Google knows all. Turns out it was a mid-90s campaign for Bud Ice, one of those disposable trends that has largely but not entirely died off.

Naturally, I clicked through to see the ad campaign behind the beer—and the crossword clue. It was high on style, mimicking horror and noir movies, if not entirely sensible. A scatting penguin always appeared at the end of the spot for no real reason. He wasn’t scary and the tagline was equally nonsensical: “Drink Bud Ice, but beware of the penguin.” You can find a collection of the series on YouTube.

These kinds of campaigns used to be omnipresent. A brewery didn’t launch a new beer or even a new package without a coordinated media blitz anchored by a TV campaign. The fact that the olds have all forgotten the evil penguin illustrates just how pervasive they were. It got me thinking: what happened to the beer ad?

Nostalgia

The short answer is that for domestic producers, the beer ad is increasingly rare, but before we address that, let’s look at what the current crop communicate. Anyone who’s tuned into an NFL game and made it to one of the 617 commercial breaks will probably have seen this:

If Norman Rockwell were alive and working for an ad agency today, this is the commercial he would have made. It is scored to an Etta James tune that was recorded when Rockwell was still alive. [As Stan points out in comments below, the version in the ad is a recent cover by War and Treaty.] It’s pure, unchallenging nostalgia, a visual narcotic designed to soothe one into making a trip to the fridge. You might think this little blast of Americana is a corporate reaction to the Dylan Mulvaney incident, but no—it’s part of a campaign that dates back to January. (This wrap-your-brand-in-the-flag spot from Bud looks more like a reaction—and inoculation—to the blowback.)

Or try this one from Michelob Ultra, which features a contemporary(ish) song that merely sounds like it was recorded in the 60s:

Historically, beer ads were heavy on the comedy, often with a health dose of dada sprinkled on top. Beer is a recreational aid, so humor becomes it. But the beer world itself and society more broadly are both fraught spaces right now. People need comforting more than laughing, and nothing provides succor like a rose-tinted glance at happier days. Beer ads reflect the moment.

The Death of the Ad?

Perhaps the most amazing thing, however, is how few beer ads any brand has released in the past six months. Molson Coors released a terrible Miller Lite/Coors Light/Blue Moon ad for the Super Bowl (tally to date: 71k views on YouTube). Since then, they used Dick Vitale to pitch beer popsicles (not a dada joke, unfortunately, but a broadly-mocked real thing), but nothing for any of their other products. You may recall that Sam Adams announced a new recipe for Boston Lager—sort of. Anyway, they released exactly one ad, and it was a (not terrible) play on Boston stereotypes.

That’s basically it for the domestics. (I have not scoured thousands of hours of broadcast TV—my sources are the official YouTube channels.) We are now three full weeks into the NFL season. As broadcast TV dies, the NFL is one of the last places to find large audiences—and they just happen to be full of beer drinkers. Last season, three of the top five most-watched slots of the week were Monday, Thursday, and Sunday Night Football. The marriage of the NFL and beer has been a happy one for at least fifty years, but that may be ending.

Why? Well, a clue may come from the one segment that’s doing well—Mexican imports. Those seem to be doing fine. Apparently the ROI on a Corona ad still pencils out for a football game. Perhaps that isn’t the case anymore for domestic beer. Remember the Bud Light Dilly Dilly ads from 2017? By the old “evil penguin” metrics of the mid-90s, they were a big success, sparking national attention and a lot of earned media. But despite all the money ABI spent making and broadcasting them, Bud Light sales continued their inexorable descent. They didn’t even create a blip.

Ironically, it was these trends that led Bud Light to Dylan Mulvaney’s digital door. Top-down campaigns aren’t moving the needle. Brands are increasingly forced to pursue a bottom-up, almost grassroots approach to marketing. Mass audiences are gone, so they’re micro-targeting markets instead. It’s cheaper but a lot more work.

I am left with one final thought. This may not be an end state, but a low period. Domestic mass market lagers will ultimately shrink down to a certain percent of the market and bottom out. But beer isn’t going to die. That disastrous Miller Lite/Coors Light/Blue Moon ad may have hinted at the future. In another 25 years, maybe it will be a different company and style of beer that has become “mass market” and advertises to a mass audience.