In 2000, one of the
American domestic mass-producing
beer giants released a television
advertisement with some
interesting implications. Here's a basic,
skin and bones reproduction of this
mini-drama.
(
This is an approximation of the dialogue. Not the exact words, but close enough.
Dramatis Personae
Trying to Act Cool Man - A man who's just trying to act cool, and get a
beer, in a harsh, harsh world of
evil and
deception.
Sexy Bartender Woman - She's
sexy. She's a
bartender. She's a
woman. She's also
sneaky.
Oh yeah!
Man walks up to a bar. He's your average, good-looking, suave, male. He approaches the gorgeous female bartender.
Trying to Act Cool Man: Gimme a beer, please.
Sexy Bartender Woman:(
coy, sexy smile) What kind of beer?
Trying to Act Cool Man: Definitely an
import or a
microbrew.
We follow Sexy Bartender Woman
over to the tap, wearing a mischevious look and a tight leather tank top. Sexy Bartender Woman
holds the pint glass where Trying to Act Cool Man
will not see it. She fills it up with Coors Light or some equivalent swill, whichever beer company paid for the ad. She brings the beer over to Trying to Act Cool Man.
Trying to Act Cool Man:
Takes a sip Mmm. Yeah. I don't know how people can
drink that
domestic stuff.
Sexy Bartender Woman:
nods, smiling the entire time. She shares the dramatic irony with the viewers.
Okay. First let's look at the basic message this beer company is using as a substitution for, "
PLEASE!,
PLEASE! BUY OUR...
THING!! YOU NEED IT! YOU WANT IT! BUY IT!! PLEASE!? GIMME
MONEY!" (Which is, of course,
the basic message of any advertisement.)
The beer company's major assertion seems to be that even
suave,
sophistocated-looking men won't be able to tell the difference between a
mass-produced,
domestic beer such as
Bud Light,
Miller High Life, or
Coors, and an
imported/
microbrew beer such as
Warsteiner,
Sam Adams,
Guinness,
Sierra Nevada, or
Heineken. In essence, I hesitate to assume this beer company wants to
slander the various, higher-priced, higher-quality
imports and
microbrews. Rather, it seems, they're attempting to raise their lower-priced, lower-quality beer to the same station that the others enjoy. They're trying to associate their
beer with the
quality of beers which are brewed in smaller
quantities and with more care.
However, on the surface, they've chosen a wholly unsophisticated way to do so. Consider the
target demographic. They can't be aiming at
microbrew/
import drinkers, since anyone who drinks a microbrew/import beer on a regular basis and has a sense of smell knows the difference between the
taste of different beers, and will easily recognize the
bland, watered-down quality that your average
mass-produced,
domestic beer presents. That person will find the commercial
hilarious(in much the same way that hard core
caffeine heads got a great laugh out of the "We've switched her coffee to decaf... Let's see if she notices" commercials) So their
target is people who already drink beers like
Miller Lite. People who probably, on some small, hidden level, resent microbrew drinkers as
elitists.
From the
content, we can also
infer that the target is even more
specified, male drinkers of
mass-produced,
domestic beer. Men who will recognize Sexy Bartender Woman making a
fool out of Trying to Act Cool Man and fear the same thing happening to them.
The
commercial invokes the powerful fear of
mockery and thus
rejection by a
woman, a big part of the common male
psyche in our current
cultural state. The
commercial, like many others, plays on
subconscious fears and
aspirations, tears them out and reshapes them in an
image that suits the desires of the people hawking the
Product.
There's also the fact that Sexy Bartender Woman picks that particular
brand of beer. You get the feeling that she's done this before. That she knows
this beer is the one with the
taste and
quality to
rival the kind of beer Trying to Act Cool Man asks for. They've
tied the sexy woman to the product.
Trying to Act Cool Man, himself, although he may seem like a true
dunce, doesn't undergo a complete
character sacrifice. He gets a slap on the
wrist. He gets a "silly boy" from Sexy Bartender Woman. Because he recognizes the good taste of the
beer being sold, he cannot be a complete
fool or the company will have worked against their
product in very
subtle ways. The people making the
commercial knew this. He's still a
clean-cut,
good-looking guy. He's still getting attention from the
ladies, and that's all that matters, right? Sure. (And the ways of
contemporary advertising are subtle indeed)
So this
commercial, like nearly any other, is a lot more than what we see on the
surface. The unconscious, cultural imagery is sophisticated and
subversive, and the
innocent trickery can be boiled down to
heartless manipulation of deeply
imbedded fears.
Luckily, anyone who chews their
media well before they
swallow can get a hearty
burst of
entertainment by recognizing what a
farce it really is.