Busch beer's SuperBowl ad is a joke.

Our headline isn't mean-spirited. It's just a fact. The first-ever Busch beer SuperBowl ad is likely to follow ShockTop's one-and-done foray into the big game a year ago. There's just not much here. Busch offers almost 30 seconds of a single can-opening-sound-related lame attempt at humor.

While the humor here is minimal, if not in fact, annoying, this may be the least of the issues with the ad. The biggest miss of all? Beyond the "clean, cold" titles at the end (overshadowed by yet another can-opening-sound reference), there is nothing here to suggest the beer is somehow different or desirable. Heck, every beer can sounds the same when opened. It's generic. And who cares, anyway? 

Once upon a time

There was a time when Busch tried to put forth a product-distinctiveness claim, albeit somewhat hampered by its imitative foundation. "Head for the Mountains" was a call to action motivated mostly by Anheuser-Busch's envy of the Colorado home and imagery of the Coors brewery.

Unlike this year's version, that almost 40-year-old ad still worked pretty hard to tell a story of product distinctiveness. The can-opening-sound was simply an attention-getting device, not the primary point of the ad. This year's ad dramatically--and foolishly-- reverses those priorities.
​
Isn't it enough just to be funny?

While humor has had a role in countless beer ads over the years, getting a good laugh is just not enough by itself to sell beer. If it was, the brand that offered up one of the funniest Super Bowl beer ads ever (it aired in spot markets) would still have a thriving business.

Old Milwaukee's ad was hilarious. And it sold no beer.

The feeble attempt at humor in Busch beer's new ad isn't hilarious.

And it won't sell any beer.

---