Brewer Secretly Rigs Plumbing in Man’s House to Make Beer Flow From Every Tap

Those jokers at Saatchi & Saatchi and Tui Brewery have a viral hit on their hands, notching more than 5 million views in about a week for various versions of a video that shows some New Zealand dudes pranking a pal by rigging the plumbing in his house so that every tap dispensed beer. An integrated campaign will follow.

Russ, the good-sport prankee, seems understandably surprised, though not especially upset, when intoxicating brown brew starts flowing from his kitchen and bathroom spigots. (The tap water in my apartment looks like that, and I get kinda woozy when I drink it, but I'm pretty sure it's not beer.)

Tui's technicians and a master plumber painstakingly hooked up kegs to the pipes supplying Russ' house. "It went without a hitch," says Saatchi creative director Guy Roberts, "although the plumber did have to make sure it was properly connected so we didn't feed beer back into the city water supply." (Now there's an ad campaign I'd like to see!)

The effort's not upsetting like some prankvertising stunts, but there is a certain inherent creepiness in having friends and strangers invade your space and make "alterations" when you're not home. Hopefully they removed all the surveillance hardware—14 tiny hidden cameras were used to make the video—or footage of Russ's butt could wind up on YouTube any day now.

This is the kind of stunt Anheuser-Busch could never attempt. If you replaced tap water with Michelob or Bud, who'd notice?


    

New Zealand Brewer Shows You How Not to Reference Gay Marriage on a Billboard

The latest Tui beer billboard from New Zealand's DB Breweries is a homophobic eyesore, according to feedback on the brand's Facebook page. Or else it's funny and people should get over it, also according to feedback on the brand's Facebook page. Tui's marketing manager claims the ad's headline—"Dad's new husband seems nice." "Yeah right"—is an innocent combination of the brand's iconic catchphrase with current events: New Zealand's parliament passing a Marriage Equality Act earlier this month. The ad was meant "to highlight the common situation or uncertainty experienced when someone's parent remarries," he says. In other words, the "Yeah right" refers to the awkwardness of a parent remarrying another, not just someone of the same sex. I don't think Tui meant any actual harm here, but the delivery was crap. If you have to explain a joke, that's proof that it bombed. That's not something you can blame on the audience.