Hasta La Creative!

Never underestimate the power of packaging and design to influence consumer attitudes—and if you’re lucky, move product.

This lesson is brought to you by Miller Lite, which enjoyed a sales spike after it began shipping its beer in ’80s-style cans last year, originally as part of a tie-in with Anchorman 2. A large number of folks apparently prefer their beer wrapped in retro white labels instead of blue, which has been the brand’s primary hue for the past dozen years.

Maybe the throwback cans simply struck a nostalgic chord, or perhaps the shiny labels stand out on retail shelves. Whatever the case, it’s had the curious effect of making consumers think the product itself has improved—which it hasn’t.

“A lot of people said, ‘I think the beer even tastes better,’ ” Miller exec Ryan Reis tells Bloomberg Businessweek.

Wisely, the brewer has decided to make the white labeling permanent, even extending the color scheme to its bottles and bar taps. Alas, after initially bubbling up, sales of Miller Lite have settled. In fact, they’re down 1 percent for the 12 months that ended Aug. 10.

Also never forget how quickly fads can fade?

Via Consumerist.

When you get to a certain point, usually around your mid-20s, you realize there’s not much more to life than drinking delicious beer. Imagine a world where you only wake up when it’s time to imbibe a bottle of suds. 

That’s the strange reality in this dark, surreal Brazilian ad for Skol by agency F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, in which sleeping bat-people, hanging upside down all over town, wake up when they hear a Skol Beats beer opening.

I can dig it. Take a look below, and see if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief (from the ceiling … without spilling your beer).

CREDITS
Client: Ambev
Product: Skol Beats
Agency: F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi
Spot: “Morcegos” (“Bats”)
Creative Executive Directors: Fabio Fernandes, Eduardo Lima
Creative Director: Theo Rocha
Creative Staff: Theo Rocha, Thiago Carvalho
Account Supervisors: Marcello Penna, Ricardo Forli, Rafael Cappelli, Marcela Paiva
Planners: José Porto, Guilherme Pasculli, Victor Marx, Felipe Santini
Media: Fabio Freitas, André Cais, Bruno Storace, Vivian Simões, Caroline Pascuinelli
Agency Producers: Victor Alloza, Renato Chabuh, Gisele Campos, Maira Massullo, Rafael Paes
Production Company: Zohar Cinema E Comunicação Ltda
Director: 300 Ml
Executive Producer: Carlos Paiva, Isabelle Tanugi
DOP: Enrique Chediak
Producer: Angelo Gastal
Editor: Rami D’aguiar
Motion: Full Frame
Postproduction: Full Frame
Sound: A9
Client Supervisors: Pedro Earp, Fábio Baracho, Pedro Adamy, Taciana Ávila

Here’s the newest example of a clever invention that shouldn’t have to exist.

Undercover Colors is a line of chemically enhanced nail polish currently being developed by undergrads at North Carolina State University. The polish can reportedly detect the presence of date-rape drugs such as (one would assume) rohypnol in drinks and change color to indicate a warning. 

So far, few details have been announced about the product, which a spokesperson tells the Triangle Business Journal is “in the R&D stage.” It got an early boost by winning a university entrepreneurship challenge called the Lulu eGames and from an early investor who contributed $100,000, the business journal reports.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the most frequently cited drugs used to incapacitate sexual assault victims are rohypnol (illegal in the U.S.), GHB (legal as a narcolepsy treatment) and ketamine (legal as an anesthetic for humans and animals).

So, it’s reasonable to guess that the Undercover Colors team is trying to develop a product that will react to those three drugs, possibly along with ecstasy (MDMA).

The nail polish, while innovative, is likely to re-open two long-running debates about date-rape drugs and rape prevention:

First, our society shouldn’t need tools to prevent rape, such as the recently launched Guardian Angel necklace that quietly alerts friends that the wearer is in trouble. 

Second, date-rape drugs are far more rare than pop culture often leads us to believe. Reliable numbers are notoriously hard to come by, but a 2007 survey of female sexual assault victims attending colleges found that only 0.6 percent were sure they’d been slipped a drug, while another 1.7 percent suspected they had been given a drug. 

In that same survey, 82 percent of victims reported being drunk, a stat which USA Today featured in its 2013 article about how alcohol is the most common drug used in sexual assault. “Roofies are very rarely—if ever—seen in real life,” an investigator told the newspaper.

Anyone who’s been active in rape prevention efforts knows that discussing alcohol can be volatile and extremely divisive. Pointing out the role of alcohol is often seen as synonymous with victim blaming, while the image of someone covertly spiking a drink with a dissolvable powder clearly conveys who’s at fault, making it a popular plot line for party-boy villains in movies and TV. 

(Quick sidebar with a real-world example: A male friend of mine was actually drugged by two women while visiting Eastern Europe. He was with two friends, whom the girls had convinced to drink some very strong alcohol until they were incapacitated. When the girls realized mid-evening that my friend wasn’t drinking, they made him some hot tea. He passed out, woke up the next day to find their luggage stolen, and a doctor told him he almost certainly would have died if he’d had another cup of the drugged tea. So, it happens, but not always in the situations you might expect.)  

If Undercover Colors becomes a national product, it’s hard to imagine many potential customers rushing out to buy it. In the end, if you’re careful enough to be mindful of being drugged, you’re probably careful enough to open, make or pour your own drink and politely decline anything else.

Hat tip to my friend Clair McLafferty, who among other things writes about cocktail science for Mental Floss.

On Monday, we posted Miller Lite’s new national TV spot, featuring a handful of fan photos selected from some 180,000 gathered through the immensely successful #ItsMillerTime hashtag campaign.

Now, with impeccable timing, Newcastle is here to call bollocks on the whole idea.

The British brewer, known for its anti-marketing marketing, just launched its own hashtag campaign, #NewcastleAdAid, in which it’s also asking for fan snapshots—and promises to use the wonders of Photoshop to turn them into really shoddy-looking ads.

Why the sudden embrace of low-cost user-generated content? Because it blew its marketing budget on celebs for the Super Bowl and the Fourth of July.

“Newcastle recognized it needed more ‘engaging social content’ to keep all of its new followers interested, but this lazy branded content wasn’t going to make itself,” the brand tells AdFreak. “Newcastle definitely is not the first brand to ask fans to post photos on social media to ‘build a stronger community’ and whatnot, but Newcastle definitely is the best at turning those photos into into obvious, exaggerated, poorly executed ads.”

Here’s the pitch video from Droga5, running on Twitter and Facebook:

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There’s no way more American to celebrate the Fourth of July than selling out your country for an English beer, says Newcastle.

The Heineken-owned brand, brewed in Britain, and ad agency Droga5 continue their deft efforts to troll Independence Day, now with videos featuring Pittsburgh-born actor Zachary Quinto, pitching “Newport [sic] Brown Ale, the most American of non-American beers.”

It’s ballsy for any marketer to pay talent to purposefully mangle its name in an ad. But it’s also very much in keeping with the self-deprecating tone of Newcastle’s “If We Won” campaign, introduced by Stephen Merchant, and soon to present Elizabeth Hurley.

Overall, the tongue-in-cheek fantasy about how great America would be if Britain had won the Revolutionary War works pretty well, in large part because the brand is so happy to skewer itself—and the tagline’s totally absurd premise—along with the U.S.

“There’d be crumpets,” says the voiceover in another spot. “Also, we would have imprisoned the Founding Fathers, stripped Patriot supporters of the property and possessions and ruled your nation with an increasingly tyrannical hand. But just think … crumpets.”

The brand also has posted a new ad with Merchant riffing on the perks of a British accent. Additional sans-celebrity spots focus on Mount Rushmore, Prohibition and yellow cabs. As in so much great comedy, though, the funniest bits are the most surprisingly honest ones—try the take on English vs. American muffins.

Plus, there’s always the added entertainment of the most jingoistic YouTube commenters playing right into the brand’s hands by flying off the wall over the perceived diss. Because, you know, in case you didn’t get the memo … Britain didn’t win.
 

Newcastle Brown Ale had a big hit with its “If We Made It” ambush campaign around the Super Bowl. Now, the British brewer has done something similar for July 4.

The new campaign, from Droga5, is called “If We Won,” and it imagines what America would be like if Britain had won the Revolutionary War. It also continues the tradition, begun last year, of celebrating July 3 as Independence Eve—so the Brits can sneak in with their bangers and mash ahead of Independence Day on July 4.

It’s all a bunch of bollocks, of course—or rather, no bollocks.

Stephen Merchant kicks things off with the amusing video below. Elizabeth Hurley and Zachary Quinto will join the campaign with their own videos in the coming days. There will be 16 pieces of filmed content in all, “to help Newcastle celebrate the land that nearly became ‘Great Britain 2,’ ” the brewer says.

“It’s not easy to sell a British beer during a supremely American holiday, so we’re imagining how great America could have been—and how much beer we could have sold—if the Brits had won the Revolutionary War,” says Quinn Kilbury, brand director for Newcastle Brown Ale, who spoke to Adweek earlier this month about the brand’s Facebook advertising.

“In the late 1700s, colonial Americans risked life and limb to fight for their freedom. Today, we’re running the very real risk of people totally not getting the joke here, and we think that’s pretty patriotic.”

It pays to follow Newcastle Brown Ale on Twitter. Not much, but it pays.

The British beer brand continues its tongue-in-cheek ribbing of traditional marketing by pledging Monday night to pay the next 50,000 people who follow @Newcastle “the princely sum of $1.” To take the brewer up on this, visit follownewcastleontwitter.com.

This is all in the name of transparency. “Why should people endure the unsolicited marketing of other beer brands for free when they can endure Newcastle’s unsolicited marketing and get paid?” the brand rightly asks. The brand is actually going to mail 50,000 checks for $1 each. (“Newcastle-branded checks, of course.”)

The stunt, orchestrated by Droga5, is called “Follow The Money,” and it’s not a complete joke. Despite having some big YouTube hits, and almost 1 million Facebook fans, the brand has fewer than 16,000 Twitter followers. “We really do want 50,000 more Twitter followers,” the brand tells us.

If you've been settling into a slower pace of life with Kona beers but want to move on to something stronger, Cruzan Rum might be right for you.

Building on last year's campaign, themed "The Don't Hurry," the brand illustrates that its version of relaxation isn't constricted to the kooky metaphorical island from which it hails. Nope, it's all about a state of mind—and whether you're speed dating or playing chess, you've got to kick back and savor life (and rum).

The five new spots by ad agency Walton Isaacson are similar to last year's, which highlighted the eccentric air that came with drinking the rum. This time, though, they've swapped spokesmen, promoting the soothing Barry White-esque voiced parrot.

CREDITS
Client: Beam Suntory
Vice President, General Manager, Mixables Category Business Team: Jared Fix
Senior Director, Rum and Cordials: Brendan Lynch
Senior Brand Manager, Rum: Nabil Wanna
Global Manager, Consumer and Market Insights: Janu Lakshmanan
Brand Assistant, Rum and Cordials: Corine Reed

Agency: Walton Isaacson
Co-Owners: Cory Isaacson, Aaron Walton
Executive Producer: Dana Offenbach
Group Creative Director: Miguel Garcia Castillo
Creative Director: Mark Westman
Associate Creative Director: Jose Martinez
Senior Designer: Laurent Varlet
Senior Account Director: Nick Vitellaro
Account Executive: Kelly Clark

Production Company: Tool of North America
Executive Producer: Oliver Fuselier
Director: J.J. Adler

Editing Company: Beast
Executive Producer: Peter Hulliger
Editor: Angelo Valencia

Music: Ramblin Man
Executive Producer: Yupa Wathanasin
Composer: Daniel Belardinelli

Jose Cuervo literally bottles up its history in this campaign from McCann New York.

The effort, which includes a TV spot and smartphone app, centers on intricate dioramas from animation studio Laika House. Finely detailed models capturing key Cuervo moments are placed inside tequila bottles.

We're treated to the volcanic eruption that led to the growth of agave used in making tequila; Mexico's fiery victory at the Battle of Puebla in 1862 (France lost, no surprise there); the brand keeping Americans hammered during Prohibition; the birth of the margarita; and a beach volleyball tournament, included because Cuervo is a pro-series sponsor.

These miniatures are lovingly crafted and provide a novel respite from the usual high-tech commercial effects. Note the facial expressions—Jose looks forceful and assured—and the rich textures of the sea and soil.

When users of the brand's mobile app hover their phones over a bottle of Cuervo Tradicional, a 3-D diorama of the bar where Cuervo helped invent the margarita appears. And after a few shots, who knows what else you'll start seeing?

This new ad for Mezcal El Silencio tequila by agency Pablo Escargot starts off the same way many beer/liquor ads do—i.e., like from a clip of Ocean's Eleven, with bunch of guys in suits walking in slow motion to a steady rock/techno beat and a deep raspy voiceover.

It celebrates men being men, and the viewer quickly realizes it's satire. (The Post-it notes on the forehead are a nice touch.) When it comes to the requisite seduction scene, though, things totally fall apart and an unlikely hero emerges.

There's plenty of goofy overacting here, and the celebration of the strong, silent type isn't exactly revolutionary, either. But it's still a funny jab at all of the fist-pumping bro-mercials we've seen lately.

Via Co.Create.