Shown people actually drinking the product? I know they voluntarily don’t show folks drink it now days, but t.v. has been around for a long time now. Have they ever shown someone actually drinking beer in a commercial?
What, you mean ANY beer commercial EVER? As soon as you find someone who has seen every beer commercial ever made, let me know, we’ll ask them.
I do know that drinking beer in a commercial is against the NAB (National Assn of Broadcasters) code. It’s not a law, but a voluntary set of guidelines. Now if only they would obey the other NAB rules, which forbids things like the sounds of telephones ringing, emergency sirens, and car horns.
Every commercial in this part of the world. Must be wierd watching a beer commercial that dosen’t show drinking. What exactly do they show?
I recall seeing an ‘oldies commercial’ TV program some years back, where they explained why people did not drink the beer on TV anymore. It seems that one pretty famous guy of the time, whose name I have forgotten, was paid to advertise beer during some long event on TV. To prove the stuff was good, he drank some each commercial. Well, there were many commercials. Remember, back then the commercial interval was 60 seconds.
By three-fourths of the way through the program, he was crocked and could barely stand up. Red Skeleton, the famous comedian, had a skit based on the incident where he consumed a – fake – liquor and kept saying it was a real smooth drink. By the end of his skit, he acted so slopped that he could not say the words right.
After that episode with the beer, the government stepped in and said they just couldn’t have people slobbering all over the screen on real time commercials. So, they stopped advertisers from guzzling booze on the sets.
They assumed that the general public could tell the difference from people getting drunk in a movie and real life products.
That was a mistake.
Sheesh! I know it seems like there are commercials that frequently, but what is your source for the “commercials every 60 seconds?”
I think he meant they were a minute long.
They usually show a guy pouring the beer and looking at it while he talks about it being “full bodied” or better than some other beer, or arguing with another drunk about how it’s great tasting/less filling. But they don’t show them drinking it. :rolleyes: Silly, huh?
Lately, some commercials have started spoofing this… In I believe it was a Molsen ad, the two Canadian guys are at a table in front of a pair of beers, and say “Now, we’re not actually going to drink these in the commercial, because that’s against regulations”, and suddenly the screen goes black and one asks “Hey, who turned the lights out?”. When the lights come back on, both mugs are empty and they’ve each got a bit of foam on the upper lip.
Likewise in the Guinness commercials, they typically use a gimmick to cause a fadeout just as the drinking occurrs (such as the train entering a dark tunnel, comes out, glass is empty). That kind of thing. Its not as weird as it sounds; for one thing, there aren’t many beer commercials on tv. As well, they (like so many other products nowadays) go for humor rather than making raw claims about product quality.
Was spoofed by Paul Hogan, too, in a commercial where he winds up looking longingly at the beer, the commercial still having some time to run, then picks it up and mutters “fade to black” while lifting the beer to his mouth.
At one time Canadian guidelines said they couldn’t even show the beer or the container, only the label. So you got old Molson or Labatt’s ads showing completely unrelated stuff, like a bunch of people riding horses, then a label on the screen at the end.
Of course, the prize for circumlocution goes to ads for feminine hygiene products …
Don’t forget the foam running down the mug with the brand name etched on it.
There’s that one Sam Adams commercial where the guy starts drinking it and gets foam on his nose. I think you could argue that he actually drank some in that commercial.
Jman
The Skelton skit was for Guzzler’s Gin and it is available on at least one Skelton video collection.
A similar thing happened in the classic I Love Lucy “Vitameatavegamin” (sp?) skit, in which Lucy is hired to do a live commercial for the vitamin product which just happens to contain a lot of alcohol. By the fifth or sixth time through it, she’s having a great deal of difficulty with the name and other bits of the script.
As an aside, since the demise of comedian Foster Brooks, humor deriving from the antics of people who are drunk has almost vanished. An interesting social phenomena. Don’t know if it means we’re all afraid of being labeled non-PC or if it means we’ve grown up some as a society.
That’s funny you should mention Foster Brooks. I was just wondering what happened to him? I guess, like you said, drunken humor doesn’t have a place anymore.