Hasta La Creative!

No one inspires sympathy quite like a guy who spots his girlfriend on Tinder while shopping around on the the dating app himself.

A new campaign from Brazilian agency Candy Shop for Boca Maldita, a regional high-alcohol beer, riffs on modern infidelity—as it plays out on mobile and social networks. Four print ads feature headlines from the Ashley Madison school of adultery-themed, logic-affronting copy—along with the tagline, “Some days you just want to forget.”

It’s hard to feel bad for the dude whose wife catches him cheating by reading his texts. (She’s the one more deserving of the stiff drink). But there’s a good dose of schadenfreude here, mixed in with a call to action to drown your sorrows, even when they’re entirely of your own making. 

Candy Shop’s Facebook page includes three radio spots for anyone who knows Portuguese. There are also a few people tagging their friends on in the comments section, which seems not very cool, but also perhaps righteous.

The agency tells us that Boca Maldita is a craft beer with a limited run every six months. The ads will run as posters in Brazilian breweries and on social media. The Boca Maldita Facebook page, however, has only about 100 likes and no posts at all, so far. But that’s presumably because the company shut it down after its wife noticed it one night.

Via Ads of the World.

Sure, we Americans drink a whole lot of light beer, but do you realize just how much?

The infographic below from the team at alcohol-fueled site VinePair shows the staggering scope of mainstream beer sales—especially Bud Light, which tallies $3 billion more in sales than its closest competitor, Coors Light.

The data, via IRI and Beer Advocate, are from 2013 but likely still quite accurate. Yuengling stands alone as the only privately owned craft beer in the Top 20, and VinePair notes that smaller brewers make up just 15 percent of sales. (Oh, and the site has another graphic suggesting microbrewed upgrades for the light beer lovers among you.)

If nothing else, the chart highlights the silliness of Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad positioning craft beer as some sort of anti-American hipster insurgency. Anheuser-Busch seems to be doing just fine without having to spend millions in ad dollars to crush the craft beer movement.

Beer cans are booming, which is great if you like your craft brew easily portable, crushable and recyclable. But it’s also great if you’re a packaging designer.

The can comeback, led by brands like Ska Brewing, Oskar Blues and New Belgium, has opened up a 360-degree canvas for label designers typically restricted to the few stickers on a beer bottle.

Thrillest has (with the help of CraftCans.com guru and Canned! author Russ Phillips) created a handy gallery of its picks for the “10 coolest-looking beer cans in America.” And while I was glad to see a few of my personal favorites on the list (including my friends and neighbors at Good People Brewing in Birmingham, Alabama), I feel like they left off a few brews that are practically works of art.

You can see Phillips’ picks above and learn more about each on Thrillest.

Below are a few of my own selections:

21st Amendment: Hell or High Watermelon
I can’t say I’m too interested in drinking a watermelon wheat beer, but man, I love the whimsical design.

 
New Belgium: Shift
Great minimalist design here, especially compared to the brewer’s famed Fat Tire look.

 
MadTree: Gnarly Brown
A beer that looks like it’d drink you if it had the chance.

 
Brindle Dog: Orange Grove Wheat
This one doesn’t seem to be around anymore, but you can read the designer’s story here.

What are some of your favorite beer can designs? Or aesthetics aside, what are your favorite canned beers overall?

Beck's recently made an unorthodox contribution to New Zealand's Music Month by unveiling a touch-activated street poster that lets passers-by play or even remix tracks from local musicians.

The posters are made with conductive ink and special sensors that react to human touch like an iPad screen would, with audio coming from a rear-mounted speaker. Most of the music provided is feckless indie rock, but it's a nationally sponsored music festival, so no one should be expecting Meth Drinker or anything.

The posters were a collaborative effort between Novalia and the Shine agency, and one of the posters has been put up for auction to benefit the New Zealand Music Foundation. You may recall that Beck's came up with a playable beer bottle last year, which makes me wonder if Beck's has a hidden agenda to make music come out of anything. If so, I eagerly await the singing toilet seat.

Miller High Life would like you to meet Rich, the least interesting man in the world.

The champagne of beers, absent on national TV since 2012, is returning to the airwaves Monday with a new campaign from Leo Burnett, themed "I Am Rich." The concept, on its face, is that you don't need lots of money, or fancy drinks, to be happy.

More subtly, it's also a dog-whistle shot at Dos Equis: You don't need to be an international man of mystery to have a rewarding life.

Instead of the aspirational charm of a high-flying, larger-than-life jet-setter, there's grainy footage of dive-bar billiards, shot on 35mm film, which somehow comes off as both artsy and mundane.

The core, populist idea is a nice one and makes you really want to like the ads. The opening of "Central Park," one of two spots, shows promise. It's endearing that the dude likes to think of the scraggly tree outside his window as a Fifth Avenue penthouse view. And what sane person doesn't consider his or her gregarious dog to be a butler?

Unfortunately, Rich is pretty obnoxious, thanks to purple prose masquerading as cleverness. "My helipad is being resurfaced, so tonight we travel by more humble means," says Rich. "At my country club, we play parlor games with members of the royal family."

Walking to the local dive, drinking Miller High Life, and shooting pool with the owners seems like fun. So does hanging out with Rich's dog. But listening to Rich while he's spewing anxious nonsense about how awesome his life is? Not so much.

In fact, Rich doesn't really seem that happy at all. Or maybe, the voiceover is just a little too real. The kind of deadpan inside jokes that might fly in a casual conversation among friends don't quite work as persuasive ad copy for the masses, especially when the grit and sincerity of the footage end up working against the try-hard irony of the voiceover.

The ad ends up feeling like it's mocking the demographic it's trying to court. At least Rich can rest assured that he isn't making any beer execs richer by spending what little money he has on High Life.

Miller Fortune, at 6.9 percent alcohol by volume, is meant to appeal to a generation that buys distilled spirits more than its older siblings.

When guys get together and have a few drinks, things tend to get a little stupid. That's a fact most alcohol marketers would prefer not to highlight, lest advocating stupid fun might come off sounding like promoting activities that are dangerously stupid.  

Nonetheless, Carlton Dry is, with the help of Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne, Australia, embracing harmless idiocy. A series of vignettes, part of the brand's #HelloBeer campaign, features a group of bored, buzzed friends letting their imaginations run wild. It's good, inane fun, including high notes like a trash-bag-and-vacuum fat suit, an upside-down dance party and our favorite, cooking hot dogs in a dishwasher. We'll need to grab more than just one sixer before we're willing to try that stunt, though. Via The Drum.

La marque Heineken a récemment présenté à l’occasion de son 140ème anniversaire The Sub, une machine de bière à domicile dessinée par le designer Marc Newson. Un objet au design rétro-futuriste inspiré des sous-marins qui sera disponible à partir du 1er trimestre 2014. A découvrir en images dans la suite.

L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération.

Afin de célebrer les 140 ans de la marque, Heineken a imaginé la Next Gallery, une péniche transformée en sous-marin présentée sur la Seine, voulant ainsi plonger les visiteurs dans un univers rétro-futuriste, rappelant les origines de la marque. Une création inattendue et visuelle présentée le 10 octobre dernier.

« L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération. Bateau-sous-marin de la Cie Transport Culturel Fluvial-Cargoplume »

« L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération. Bateau-sous-marin de la Cie Transport Culturel Fluvial-Cargoplume »

« L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération. Bateau-sous-marin de la Cie Transport Culturel Fluvial-Cargoplume »

« L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération. Bateau-sous-marin de la Cie Transport Culturel Fluvial-Cargoplume »