Newcastle Brown Ale has long been know for taking the mickey with their advertising. So much so that it has become a central part of their brand identity. Now they are taking another stab at their favourite target, Super Bowl ads, with possibly their weirdest idea yet.
Newcastle Brown Ale’s ‘No Bollocks’ campaign is a true gem and shows that there is some truth left in advertising (“now we handcraft the same delicious beer using huge, giant machines”). And it’s continued to give traditional marketing practices a ribbing (and stock footage companies a boost) with its latest promotion, which offers punters a cheque for $1 when they sign up to its Twitter account.
The creative use of statistics is fairly common in this industry, from the recent misleading Dove ad claiming 90 percent of New Zealand women would recommend it, to a current spot for Head & Shoulders that claims you’ll be “up to 100 percent dandruff free forever”, whatever the hell that means, to any number of other ASA complaints. So we appreciate a bit of truthiness from time to time, and Lipton (which is owned by Unilever, a company well-versed in the art of sneaky number usage) has taken the proverbial out of tenuous marketing claims with its latest campaign for sparkling iced tea. Plus: one of our favourite campaigns of the year shows why honesty is the best policy.
Independence Day is a marketing free-for-all in the US. And a whole range of brands aim to tap into the patriotic fervour. But this clip, from humour collective The Kids Table, gets to the nub of the modern, foolish, hypocritical and apathetic Western human condition better than any of them with a dose of humorous ‘truthiness’. As it says, “it’s pretty hard to care about wire taps, drone strikes, and the government eroding the rights we fought for centuries ago when you’ve got an ice cold beer in your hand”.