Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Beer Me - Duncombe and Beer Advertising: Response to Reading




Beer – the world’s oldest and most popular alcoholic beverage. Most people can’t list the breweries in their country alone – especially in beer hot spots like Germany, The UK, The US and Canada because they are so plentiful. It goes without saying that beer ads are all over the place(usually with scantilly clad, sexy women helping to sell to the predominantly male buyers) , and beer conglomerates will spend millions if not billions in advertising to lure certain types of drinkers in. Being that I work at Canada’s third largest brewery, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at Duncombe’s chapter on advertising and how it translates to the beer industry.Of course, dissecting my own company’s ads could hurt buyers, which could then put me out of work, but we can take an in depth look at big players from Canada (John Labatt’s Blue), Ireland (Guinness) and The US (Budweiser). This will hopefully shed some light on the international beer scene.

In the opening pages of his chapter on advertising, Duncombe states, "ads make their pitch not to our heads but to our hearts (or anatomy a bit lower)"(Duncombe 79). By this Duncombe means that advertisers aim to pull consumers in by appealing to what means the most to them, whether its sport, weekend antics or sex. Consider the above ad with the Bud Light girl - "Life is good" boasts the ad. Bud Light is trying to convey to consumers that life is good when you consume their product, but also that sexy women drink their beer. What kind of drinker would buy this beer if the ad depicted an unattractive or average looking woman - very few. Drinkers want to consume the same products as beautiful people do in order to become beautiful, special, etc.

"All advertising is about transformation. The product advertised will transform you from what your are (incomplete, inadequate and thoroughly normal) into what you would like to be (fulfilled, successful and completely special)." (Duncombe 80) Both the Guinness and Labatt video advertisements above play on this principal. With the Guinness ad, Guinness tries to imply that by consuming their product the average Rugby viewer or Rugby player can be carried by their team through spirit and unity to glory on the pitch. However the Labatt's ad seems to work on many different plains with respect to this principal. The average joe, office workers, etc. are all shown coming out of their shells and becoming weekend warriors while drinking with friends. Blue is trying to promote their product by showing that the average joe transforms into a hooligan and can embody youth and exhuberance while drinking Labatt's. Although Labatt's shows these average people becoming fulfilled, the ad also works to show people who are already successful and fulfilled being transformed to the thoroughly normal. In this way, Labatt has made itself accessible to a much larger demographic than Guinness or Budweiser. It is important to note that Labatt's is domestic - meaning the price is neither cheap nor expensive but mid-range, and this advertising ploy helps to maintain the average drinker but also may draw in people who spend more money on imported beers, as well as those who spend less money on beer.

Individualizing advertisements is difficult for most advertisers, but where there is a will there is a way. Of individualizing the product, Duncombe writes, "It is natural for advertisers to address the individual. They want individual people to buy individual products, and their model world is composed of individual units in pursuit of self-gratification." (Duncombe 85) The Bud Light TV advertisement above helps to illustrate what Duncombe is referring to. The man hitchhiking with an axe and case of Bud Light is individualized, and picked up by the average joe and his girlfriend merely because he is a Bud Light drinker. Bud Light is attempting to say 'if you drink Bud Light - you're a good person" through this advertisement, which also plays on Duncombe's theory of transformation. However, this ad individualizes its drinkers by showing an axe weilding psycho, which leads me to believe it was probably aired around Halloween or on some horror movie network in order to grab the attention of people who are fascinated with horror. The Labatt Blue advertisement above also individualizes with the pictures of all different sorts of their drinkers and their weekend antics appearing before the 'Cheers to Friends' slogan. Guinness also plays upon this by directing their ad at Rugbyer's (please take note this ad was aired during the Rugby World Cup 2007 during match commercial breaks).
Works Cited

Duncombe, Stephen. Dream: Reimagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. New York: The New Press, 2007.

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