How Influential Are Beer Ads?

When you’re lining up at the bar, waiting to be served, do you always go for your usual brand or are you tempted to try other beers while you’re there?

If you do like to choose a different brand now and then, what’s making you do that? The chances are that it’s the advertising behind the brand that makes you think you’ll try something different.

So what makes a great ad? One of the best remembered series of beer adverts in the UK were the Guinness ads of the 1990s and early 2000s. The ads were mini-dramas in themselves, demonstrating that for all good things in life – like a perfectly poured Guinness – one has to wait! The most extreme example of this was an ad called Tipping Point, filmed in a high altitude village in Argentina, with a sequence of 6,000 dominoes starting a domino rally of epic proportions, leading into other tumbling objects including paint cans, tyres, fridges, suitcases, hay bales and cars. The grand finale was the appearance of a massive pint of Guinness made of books and the strapline “Good things come to those who wait”. At the time, it was the most expensive ad in Guinness history.

These big scale productions are less common today – and this may be a reflection of the times and the economic recession. It doesn’t stop the advertising being entertaining though. At the moment in the UK, there’s a great series of laugh-out loud ads featuring two young Aussie blokes drinking ice cold cans of Foster’s premium beer.

The two of them sit in a shack on a beach in Australia, and while they enjoy their beer, Brad and Dan answer a series of calls from young British men who need advice on some tricky situations. For example, there’s Craig from Leicester, who’s thinking about getting his girlfriend’s name tattooed on him - always a risk if you don’t know how long the relationship will last.  The boys ask what her name is. Trudy Holloway. This seems a little long, so does she have a nickname? Fortunately she does; it’s Peanut.

Brad and Dan are much happier with this, and suggest Craig should have Peanut tattooed on him instead, adding: “That way if, heaven forbid, you and Trudy do split, you just have a tattoo expressing your love for a delicious small salted nut. And we all love peanuts!”

That’s Brad & Dan all over – a quick and easy solution to a dilemma. These ads have proved so popular that they’ve started making new ones for the new Foster’s beer - Foster’s Gold.

If you haven’t had a chance to see them, you can catch them online at fosters.co.uk. It may not make you change your beer brand, but it should give you a laugh at any rate!

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