Must be my week for taglines…

News coming out of Milwaukee (or is it Colorado?): Miller is, once again, resurrecting the “Tastes Great, Less Filling” tagline. I say to this: ugh.

As a former director of marketing at Miller (but never on Miller Lite, for the record) I understand the intense pressure on management from beer distributors to run advertising they love. And boy do they love “The Debate.” But, my God, that line, written in 1981 by Bill Backer, was intricately linked to very masculine ex-athletes, like Mean Joe Green and Boog Powell, precisely because light beers were brand new. The campaign was brilliant, in 1983, when regular guys would never be caught dead with a “diet” beer. The ex-athletes made it okay to drink light beer and the “Tastes Great, Less Filling” line and debate was a simple and catchy creative device. BUT, it’s 30 years later and light beers are more popular than regular beers and this argument, this “debate,” is completely irrelevant.

Can’t Miller find something else to say?

And, for the record, the article states that the last time Tastes Great, Less Filling was used prominently in a campaign was 1991. So not true. Miller is conveniently trying to forget the late ‘90’s brilliant execution starring two scantily clad ladies who wrestle it out in a public fountain. This ad was over-seen by a good friend of mine, Tom Bick, who at the time was charge of content at Miller (and is now a strategic planner at Hill Holliday.)

Here’s the ad, as if you need to remember it. I pulled this quickly from YouTube and particularly love the rogue cut-in two-thirds of the way from some dude who looks kinda like Jonah Hill.

So I guess an owner of Tiger Woods Golf by Electronic Arts wanted to show a bug that was in the released version of the game by uploading to YouTube….EA got wind of this and posted a response to it, getting Mr. Woods himself to participate.

Pretty great that EA took the time to do this kind of thing.

Microsoft is paying Jerry Seinfeld $10 MILLION DOLLARS to combat the damage Apple has done with the “Get a Mac.” Campaign.

Huh. Maybe if they don’t want to be seen as a stodgy oldster, they should hire someone a little bit more, I don’t know, contemporary? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Seinfeld was groundbreaking TV. In the 1990s. Which is almost 20 years ago.

And, wait a second, WTF?! Jerry was a Mac Guy!

(via WSJ)
(image via Gawker)

Andy Berndt at Google, good friend of ours, making some advertising for Burger King through Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy fame. The ads, created by Seth, will precede his Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, an interesting experiment in online syndication through Google AdSense. Instead of creating content for a website and driving people to that site to aggregate eyeballs and then sell media this “series” will be exported across the web via Google (and YouTube). I was always wondering how they would make decent money on this syndication but now it makes sense: relevant preroll. Nice.

Can’t wait to see how this plays out. I’m certain the ads will be funny, if nothing else.

So one of the greatest lines in Advertising history is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this summer, Nike’s Just Do It. Awesome. And congrats to Nike and to Wieden & Kennedy.

When I was a marketing director at Miller Brewing back in the mid-nineties I had the pleasure of working with Dan Wieden and Dave Luhr and the rest of W+K Portland. At that time we were looking at re-introducing the phrase It’s Miller Time back into the American lexicon and we were debating where the line should be used, under what circumstances, and how often. My initial reaction was everywhere, in all cases, as often as possible. Dan Wieden then described how Just Do It is used, or more precisely, not used. “Only use a brand motto (that’s what they called Just Do It, it’s certainly not a slogan…) when you can give it meaning. Every use out of context, on say a t-shirt, subtracts value.” Or something like that. And then I realized I had never seen a t-shirt with the words Just Do It, or a hat or a bumper sticker. What does a bumper sticker have to do with authentic athletic performance? Nothing. In fact, he went on to point out that most Nike TV spots do not end with Just Do It. I said I didnt believe him and he showed me a reel of the greatest hits and only a handful actually ended with Just Do It. It was remarkable and made perfect sense. No wonder it has lasted so long.

Woah! Facebook’s new comments gone wild philosophy recently extended to ads! That’s kinda dope.

Despite your domination of the Airport bagged snacks theater, your product makes some substantial claims on its package, and it’s those very claims that have caused me to write you gentlemen in the hopes of some clarification and reparation.

I’m historically no fan of brand vehicles or branded content, but I can tolerate it if it’s transparent. The fact that Chris Brown, an “artist” and “musician” (i use both terms with more than a dash of sardonic vitriol) would allow his creative process to be co-opted by….

You know what? I can’t even finish the thought. Let’s go Outback tonight!

As an aside, what could Wrigley have done with the same kind of impact? How about re-buying the naming rights to Wrigley Stadium, and ensuring that they’re preserving an historic part of American History? How about that?