Adland’s finest gear up for beer challenge: could a great campaign emerge at last?

It’s been a long time since we’ve had an outstanding beer campaign, for a big brand anyway. Publicis’ LePub has done a pretty good job for Heineken and now Heineken has assigned its other brands – not to Publicis although the agency wins global production. WPP’s Ogilvy and VML have won a smaller brand each (Birra Moretti and Amstel) while Stagwell’s 72andSunny gets tequila-flavoured Desperados.

At the same time Peroni Nastro Azzurro has invited four agencies to pitch for its creative business: incumbent McCann (now part of Omnicom of course), Omnicom stablemate adam&eve\TBWA, Havas and Publicis Groupe’s Leo.

In amidst all this lot there should be a decent campaign waiting at the station but beer advertising has been constrained by legislation; the fear among clients that showing people enjoying themselves after a drink or two is off limits and the iron grip of the tech platforms with their performance marketing (that is, direct marketing) pitch. There’s also the reality that beer ads tend to show daft people, inebriated or not. And that’s frowned upon these days too.

There are probably a dozen reasons why this classic wouldn’t be allowed these days although nearly everybody finds it funny. Someone would probably complain that one of the pilots has a speech impediment.