Have a Sip from the Beer of Deceit
As the title of this essay suggests, I will be discussing a subject the media apparently feels is of great interest to many of us, given how much advertising space is devoted to trumpeting its merits. That subject is beer. Some of you readers out there may be a sports fan like me, and you would no doubt agree with me that beer and sports seem to be inseparable on the television these days. During any and every televised sporting event, we are under a constant, unrelenting barrage of advertisements pimping alcoholic products to a preposterous extent in proportion to all other commercials. After watching enough games, I have seen patterns and tendencies in beer advertising that have at last prompted me to discuss them in essay format, and I have plenty of observations.
I suppose the first questions that enter my brain after a while are “Why don’t these stations want another product to be advertised? Are there not some car companies or toy companies or anyone else out there who would be just as willing to pay for air time?” I confess I don’t know the inner workings of how ad space is sold—whether it’s a bidding process of some kind or whether there is a flat fee for a spot—nor do I know how one product is chosen over another, nor do I know how concerned the stations are with the image they will create for themselves based on the sponsors chosen. What I do know is that far too much advertising time is given to these various beer companies, and their predominance only serves to further infect our society with a mindset that athletics and alcohol somehow go together like paper towels and a paper towel dispenser. (What? All the good analogies have long since been taken.) Common sense will tell you that these two do not mix at all. For an elite athlete to perform at the highest level, he or she must be at peak mental and physical condition. I have never seen an athlete boozing up before or during a big game. So why shove alcohol down our throats during these telecasts? The only argument that can be used is that “alcohol is okay in its time and place.” Well, then, should not we reserve alcohol ads for late night programming or all of those crappy “buddy” movies from the 1980’s like “Cheech and Chong”? Is not that the “time and place” where the alcoholic segment of the audience is at its highest proportion? Probably, but let’s investigate the real motive behind these beer ads before we move on.
The first and most easily noticed thing I would point out is how the culture of sports is depicted in our society in relation to beer. It is almost assumed that drinking beer is synonymous with enjoying sports as just another social event with friends. Thus we have “tailgating” as our bizarre pre-game ritual in this country, wherein people park their RV’s and trucks in a huge lot, wear face paint or costumes, and cook hot dogs and burgers to be served with beer. There really is no connection here, just something that has become ingrained into our collective psyche as “normal” behavior prior to a sporting event. One might say it is merely the result of generations of association between beer companies and sports leagues. Still, it requires an awful lot of crassness and audacity for beer companies to run commercials during collegiate sporting events, where nearly half the participants in the games are not even of legal drinking age!
The next and more alarming observation about beer ads is that they are unquestionably targeted towards kids and teenagers. Anyone believing otherwise is utterly delusional. Think about it. Adults who drink started because it was the “kool” thing to do—they have long since passed the point where they need advertisements to persuade them to buy beer or to make them feel “kool” for doing so. Beer ads today consist only of comedy or sex. The only exception that readily springs to mind are those disgusting commercials where August Busch XVI (or whatever) talks about his family’s proud tradition of producing legal poison for the past 100 or so years, and how barley and hops combine for that fresh taste you know and love, blah blah blah. Does he ever mention the most critical ingredient, alcohol? Nope. So even when beer proprietors try to appear “honest” and “down to earth” they are still completely dependent upon deception to sell their product. One other exception would be the “Coors guy” who stands in the snow telling you about HIS proud tradition of selling legal poison and how you should certainly not consume his poison and drive at the same time. Only then apparently does it become dangerous—in no way does it also cause people to lose their jobs, beat their wives, vomit all over the place, and generally make fools of themselves. I guess those warnings aren’t as important as the one about not getting in cars. Anyway, you notice that these two ad campaigns ran simultaneously, so one clearly inspired the other directly—who cares which one it is? Every other commercial features blatant comedy, sex, or a combination of the two. You do the math: When do people develop a true sense of humor? When do people develop a sex drive? If you answered “adolescence and possibly a few years prior,” give yourself a hearty handshake. Beer companies, like any other businesses, use advertising solely to attract new customers. They have absolutely no need to advertise to those who have been loyal to the product for years—they want to depict their product as being the best choice for those in the market for that product.
Where these beer companies choose to advertise reflects the audience from which they are interested in gleaning their customers. They are only interested in the largest possible audience that consists overwhelmingly of males—sports fans are the obvious choice, primarily of male professional and college team sports. Why focus on males? Because males, far more than females, need an “excuse” to show a different side of themselves. In their constant effort to be “kool,” men are reluctant to express any emotion other than those ranging from stoic assurance to focused sternness—an exciting variety, to be sure. Beer provides that means for them to be rambunctious, rowdy, or even tearful and yet have an “excuse” for being that way, so as not to damage their “koolness” factor by these natural emotions happening without chemical assistance. I have no doubts about this being the primary motivation for the proliferation of alcohol in our society. This is why we can even have beer ads that feature sports heroes as spokesmen, even though the dichotomy does not otherwise make sense—these guys have a “reputation” to protect. How many times have you heard people defend beer by saying such droll things as “It loosens me up,” or “It just helps me have a good time”? What, as if you can’t make yourself loosen up and be more fun-loving by sheer force of will alone? I think you will find that they are saying the exact same thing as I am saying, only they don’t realize it. Beer is the excuse these people need to behave differently, and gives them an alibi if they do anything stupid in the process. Thus their alcohol-induced stupidity doesn’t take away from their inherent “koolness”—the beer made them do it! You could even take this one step further and say that beer consumption would dramatically decrease if males were assured that expressing a range of emotions is perfectly normal and acceptable. This motive is far less applicable to females. Females who booze tend to be characterized by low self-esteem and do it simply to gain acceptance from the “kool guys” who initiate the drinking process. Females would never have induced the type of beer-drinking culture we have become—they are far more comfortable with their emotions so they don’t need the assistance.
Just give me a moment to catch my breath after that tangent, and we will return to the concept of comedy and sex defining beer advertisements. I will not venture too far into the comedy aspect. We all know they are designed to shift the focus off of the serious consequences of alcohol consumption and paint the picture that it is simply a lighthearted, fun way to spend your leisure time. And who would be susceptible to this clearly laughable concept except kids and teenagers? These are the groups who are actively looking for fun and excitement wherever they can get it, at the expense of anything else. If beer companies can demonstrate to them via false advertising that their product is a chief way that this can be attained, then what morals would preclude them from doing so? Their entire purpose is selling a beverage that becomes addictive and harmful to one’s mind and body. How many moral principles do you think they really take seriously, then? So we have the Budweiser frogs and lizard, the Lite commercials about people’s wacky anecdotes, the ones with that guy in a bear suit, the ones with the huge kegs that fly across the screen, and so on. Clearly they intend to remove completely any hint of the seriousness of beginning a life of alcohol consumption, and 99% of them have nothing to do with beer—they just want you to associate their product with lighthearted comedy.
Now turn your attention to those beer ads that depend on sex to sell the product. Perhaps the beer companies are stair-stepping our kids. Start them off with some childish comedy when they are really young, then once puberty strikes we can appeal to them with the sex-crazed denizens of the fantasy worlds depicted in the next “level” of commercials. There have been several of these through the years that elicit a sharp sense of disgust on my part, but perhaps none more so than the recent Coors ads. Remember the old guy standing in the snow? Well, my guess is that did not work out too well, because now the company has performed a complete 180-degree turn and given us a host of ads that are belligerent, defiant, and obnoxious to the highest degree. They consist of some random heavy metal tune playing over images of bikini-clad women—some cavorting in the snow, some known only as “the twins”—guys thrashing wildly around in a rock concert setting, smarmy guys grinning into the camera, and perhaps some sports fans to tie things all together in a typical non-sequitur package. When I see the ad, I see Coors saying “We insist upon shoving our product down your throat, kids. You will not ignore us, teenagers. You will equate having fun to consuming our poison, college students. You will consider our product synonymous with the ‘kool’ lifestyle, else you will not be ‘kool.’ So says Coors.” Of course all the sex-themed beer ads are saying essentially this same thing, only none with less regard for those with morals than the Coors ads. Most are content simply to depict some average-looking guy with their poison in his hand being fawned over by some girl whose level of attractiveness dwarfs his own. She of course has the most hideously insincere smile on her face the entire time—probably thinking “just give me my paycheck, beer company, and let me go home”—and the guy behaves as if this attention he is getting is completely warranted. We all know how utterly ridiculous this setup is, which is exactly why I can state that the commercials are not geared towards those of us with even a minimal amount of maturity, insight and perspective. They are designed for hormonal teenagers and for college students who have not yet ceased to be “kids” in their comprehension of the idiosyncrasies of capitalist culture. I restate once again for emphasis, advertising is solely concerned with attracting NEW customers, and for beer companies, those new customers are age 18 and younger.
Citizens, there are entities in our society that think you are the biggest bunch of fools in existence. They depend upon the gullible, the naïve, and the easily manipulated to achieve their desired purposes. Will you continue to feed the machine of peer pressure, ignorance, and media-enforced ideals of “koolness”? The advertisements are only the means of getting you through the front door. What lies inside is a lifetime of addiction, deception, and adherence to social concepts that have been just as transparent in their idiocy since the first fermented beverage was created. Once the beer companies complete the first step of gaining your trust based on their “innocent” ad campaigns, your lifelong business is almost assured based on the reasons I mentioned earlier—for men, that weird concept of “rugged individualism” that prohibits them from expressing emotions on their own without chemical assistance, and for females, a lower than low self-esteem that is perfectly willing to cater to the “kool” males’ desire to objectify them. If you have any autonomy left, you may yet be able to resist the brainwash.