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"Faux fun:" A beer-ad idea that's neither original nor effective

1/21/2015

 
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Young adults. Wild party-hearty antics. A hot music track.

Put 'em all together in an alcohol-beverage ad, and you get "faux fun." It's a party like you've never seen in real life, in places that don't really exist, with people who'd never invite you to join the action anyway. But for beer brands, it's what many ad-agency creative types think is clever and edgy. And it's precisely what Bud Light's recently released SuperBowl commercial appears to be all about. 
So, what's wrong with a little faux fun?

If you were actually looking for a real-life party to crash, the prospect of this sort of unrealistic, over-the-top party action might catch your attention. But if you're looking to sell beer, chances are, you've seen it all before. More than a few times.

To the right are some of the brands that have been down this road before. Three crazy parties loaded (you'll forgive the expression) with wild action, hot music, unusually hip people, absent only a promise of big hangovers to come.

That advertising people routinely propose this idea to beer brands is just sad. At minimum, "creative" ought to mean something original.
(To see how distinctive they are, run all three videos simultaneously.)
For a beer brand, faux fun virtually guarantees a distinctive lack of distinctiveness. Hint to beer marketers: Ask yourself how many other beer brands could run the same ad. If the answer is "All of 'em," then kill the ad. It's hard to stand apart when your advertising is generic. "I've seen ads like this before" audience response is never going to yield epic business results.

Still, the ad guys, desperate to sell their party-hearty idea, will promise, "Our party will be so much hotter," and, "They've never heard our hip music before." But yield to their judgement, and the world just gets another fake-fun party, this time with an over-sized Pac-Man game.

Good luck with that, Bud Light.

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    The Author

    Dan Fox is a real beer guy.

    For more than half his 30-year career at ad agency, Foote, Cone & Belding, he ran the Coors Brewing account. Leading a group of dozens of advertising professionals, Dan also personally wrote the Pete Coors "Somewhere near Golden, Colorado" commercials, designed the Coors NASCAR graphics, authored sales-convention speeches, and most important of all, formulated marketing strategy for virtually every Coors brand, including Coors Light, Keystone, Killian's Irish Red and more. His proudest achievement? "Our team had every Coors brand growing at once."

    Over his advertising career, Dan was personally involved in the analysis, planning and creation of thousands of ads for a variety of products and services. By way of this blog, he freely shares his expertise about what works, and what doesn't, when it comes to selling beer.

    If you're in the beer-marketing business--or just interested in the subject--you may want to read what "HeyBeerDan" has to say.

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