Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Miller Brewing Limps Into Battle - Beer Wars Off To An Impotent Start With A Desperate Stretch

Give me a break. Miller using Dalamtions (a spoof on A-B Super Bowl ads? Don't they know more advertising is forgotten than remembered) to "nip at Bud Lite's heels." The first shot in a new beer war should have been some real trash talk like, "Yo momma's breaths so bad her man Bud got wizer and split."

Here's the 411. This is about the most useless ad worth watching that was ever created. How many of us ever actually saw our girlfriends get into another boy's car. The angst between beer, love and girl is such a disconnected thread that only a beer marketer could conceive it in his or her wildest dream. AND IT'S A MALE DOG, SO NOW WE'RE TALKING GAY! Miller and agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty blow chunks every way imaginable here.
This battle has no intensity. Everything about the effort says executives at Miller and Bud (hey, maybe they should start a sports restaurant called "Miller and Bud's" - let's be friends not enemy's since we're all sold at the same places anyway - you heard it hear first - "that's strategy") met on the golf course and decided to start a little contrived (remember what I say, the problem with most ads today is that they are either too obvious or too contrived) conflageration to help some advertising and media buddies in need make their next car payments.
These are the kinds of things you do when you're Miller and don't have something important to say about your product. They need a more highly consumer-desired and differentiating reason-for-being. Trading shots across the bow to generate buzz is about the same as Crispin Porter + Bogusky shooting from the hip with Orville Dedenbacher. What a useless way to waste money. How many people is Miller helping to make car payments with this campaign in relation to incremental beer sales. These guys aren't even good trash talkers. "Keep up the bad work!?"

Give me a break. That copy is not even worth the back page of USA Today's sports section.

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