the curious case of booze

having never worked on a booze account myself, i've never been in a position to comment on their advertising "strategies" (defn annoying word people in my industry use as interchangeable with "plan", "forward-thinking", "reason we think our forward-thinking plan is right", "reason i should be considered more clever than you").

i simply could not comment.

that is, not until now.
you see, anyone living in SA would have seen the following (amongst others, i'm sure) on their home screens. watching these ads you realise that in order to market beer/cider (for the aussies, this is that stuff that tastes a lot like brak-water) all you need to do is tick one/some/all of the following boxes:


young black male

• must sound educated in oxford
• must be well dressed
• must smack of ambition and/ success
• preferably with a sculpted hair-do and don-your-sunnies white teeth
  

famous (preferably pre-90's) song - following in the footsteps of heineken / windhoek .. not sure?

• must be catchy
• must be a sing-a-long
• must have a chorus that compliments the rhythm of flicking off a bottle cap / pouring into a glass
  
• preferably something by johnny clegg (so as to jerk a patriotic tear)

something "bling-ola"

• cos "research" (defn insights you pay a company to generate through clinical trials) shows that "they" dig things that are shiny ... much like goats and crows
  

don't believe me?

• take castle lite's ice-ice baby executive
• castle lager's rainbow nation .. .good lord, don't even get me started ... "more than a feeeeeee-ling"
• hansa's wors entreprenuer who ends up going into space
• foundry's pyramid-licker
• hunter's global-warming solver "chilling your china's china"
• black label ... come now, do you need an example?

memory fails me as to who exactly started this trend - was it heineken's "quando-quando-quando-quandoooo"or windhoek's (pre-louis gossett jr ... thank goodness for that rejuvenation!) "i need you baby" ?

... and then there's amstel - who apparently, to celebrate their 140 years in the business, will be kind enough to give you a gold (coloured) foil neck.

thanks jer-a-miah

goodness me, but your cup doth runneth over!

why can't they just do this ... proof that white men can dance:



i'm just saying ...is all.