The Daily Show’s Rob Riggle and Budweiser team-up for an extremely inane and unimaginative ad campaign
Over the years, when it comes to commercials that deliver the funny, most people looks toward the beer companies to appease our jonesing for 30 seconds of low-brow humor. Beer enjoys the fact that their product is one of the most egalitarian of pleasures in life. People of all colors, class and creed can find a way to enjoy a hoppy beverage, so it’s natural that on occasion, the comedy in their commercials is especially geared toward the lowest common denominator in an attempt to appeal to a mass audience.
For those of us who desire our humor to be less about crotch shots and more about cleverness, this appeal to the widest possible audience leaves us a tad empty. But when I saw Daily Show correspondent Rob Riggle hawking Budweiser, I thought to myself, alright here comes the funny; here comes the thinking man’s hilarious beer commercial. I can’t wait to see how he is going to deliver the goods…
Obviously I’ve set my expectations high as I feverishly wait for the humor. There are numerous new spots featuring Riggle, a former US Marine who serves as the Daily Show’s Military Correspondent. The first ad I see starts off well enough, he’s talking about how darker beers can hide imperfection, but the clear, water-like Budweiser doesn’t enjoy that luxury, so for Budweiser perfection is necessary. It’s a funny argument I guess, but not funny ha-ha, so much as funny you would argue the clearer a beer is, the better. According to this logic if you just pour water from a Brita into a clean class, you’d have the perfect beer, which would be pretty funny to say, but I don’t see how that sells Budweiser, if anything they’re selling Coors Light right now.
After watching the commercial again, I worry that maybe I’m not smart enough to follow this ad; that Riggle is riffing on a higher plane than I encompass, so I just hope in the next commercial he’ll dumb it down for me a little so I can be in on the joke. Thank goodness, it isn’t long before I see the next one, where Rob publicizes Budweiser’s virtue of including caps on all of their bottles. I mean, I guess that’s funny, but c’mon Daily Show guy, I know you kids over there at Comedy Central love irony as much as the next hipster, but caps on bottles? Sure it’s ironic to be arguing that your beer is better due to having a cap, because obviously all beer bottles have caps, but your irony falls short of funny on this occasion, hopefully the next spot will be better.
Alright, here we are at spot number three and it finally looks like Riggle has brought out the big guns: he’s going to talk about how Budweiser brews its beer. I know for a fact that drinking beer is funny and that 12-step programs to get you to stop drinking beer are uproarious, so it stands to reason that a commercial describing the 7-step process of brewing beer must be the paragon of hilarity. So you’ve got me Rob, you’ve got me ready to laugh, your premise is airtight, now just hit me with a clever punchline–a thinking-man’s answer to the football to the groin. Alright, you’re going through the steps and you’re talking about beechwood aging, and it’s building, and building, here comes the joke, here comes the payoff…
And nothing. Nothing, Robert. No laughter, no hard-sell on Budweiser. Riggle, you give me no funny whatsoever, what’s the deal, man? You’re a funny guy, why aren’t these commercials funnier? Oh god, oh wait, you’re serious aren’t you? The whole time these commercials in which you tout the most inane aspects of beer such as how clear it is, the fact your bottles have caps and the fact you brew beer just like everybody else does, all of those idiotic assertions weren’t meant to be ironic jokes, in fact they were deadly serious? You actually think by scraping the bottom of the barrel like this you’re making me want to buy Budweiser? Wow, if that’s the case, what a crappy ad campaign, Budweiser. Maybe the next campaign should focus a little more on making me laugh instead of extolling the “virtues” of your corporate, near tasteless, character-free macrobrew. Next time just go with what you know–buxom broads, pool parties, and shots to the groin–and leave the useless commercials talking about the irrelevant qualities of a crappy macrobrew to Samuel Adams.
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Filed under: Ad Nauseam, Television | Tagged: Beer, Bud, Budweiser, commercials, Rob Riggle, The Daily Show
I’m still waiting…..
I wouldn’t hold your breath, Ace.