Tuesday, August 6, 2013

In other words- "Surprise! You thought Sam Adams was crap!"



Remember back in the 70s when we saw commercials like this: "We secretly replaced the gourmet coffee in this restaurant with Folger's Crystals.  Let's talk to the customers and see what they say?"  All of the people in these ads would tell the strange man who for some reason was interviewing them about their coffee in the middle of a restaurant how awesome the coffee was, then express shock to learn that whatever they had consumed for dinner had absolutely murdered their taste buds, because after all if you can't tell the difference between fresh-brewed real coffee and instant you probably order your gourmet cheeseburgers off the Dollar Menu.

What's that you say?  You don't remember these commercials because you aren't old enough?  Well, neither do I, because I'm not old enough either.  So how about those ads a few years back that showed people eating pasta from Dominos and thinking that it's high-quality Italian food (those people obviously think that "high quality Italian food" is something you get at The Olive Garden?)  Or "It's not Delivery, it's DiGiorno" (featuring intensely sad idiots who have never experienced good take-out pizza, ever?)

Well, I guess this is what the makers of Sam Adams are going for with this mess.  But it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.  I've never equated Sam Adams as the instant coffee or frozen pizza of beers- that's what Rolling Rock* is there for.  I've always considered Sam Adams a reasonably high-end beer-- so why are it's makers trying to convince us that we've always regarded it as tasteless, cheap junk (like instant coffee and frozen pizza?)

*We used to drink this when we weren't of legal age, because it was very inexpensive and even when gasoline was 90 cents a gallon we had to cut corners if we wanted to have a good time on the weekends.**

**No, I'm not old enough to remember when gasoline was 90 cents a gallon, either.  Shut up.

2 comments:

  1. I think that the ad men are so desperate for a hook that they'll try any damned thing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am old enough to remember those Folger's Commercials (and 90 cent gas too-- and Coke for a nickle) but I haven't ever really thought that Sam Adams was all that good.

    ReplyDelete