Top 5 Old School Alcohol Adverts That Are Pretty Damn Terrible

By Gerry Flynn

Adverts, an unending parade of utter dickwash replete with young and beautiful, happy-go-luckies eager to shove the dream down your throat in the name of consumerism. It’s really not a hard sell; alcohol tastes good, makes you feel good and has probably played more than a supporting role in some of the best nights of most peoples’ lives. In spite of this, alcohol companies seem to be able to get away with cultural murder on the advertising front and have been doing so for years. I wish I could say things have improved, but they haven’t they’re just louder nowadays.*

Canadian Club Whiskey

Preying on that age old desire to impress your dad and relying on the nature of the whiskey drinker being male. Canadian Club still seems to cling to this image, whether for irony or for posterity, it’s unclear. The message seems to be that drinking scotch will put hairs on your chest and make you able to go ten rounds in the ring with Ali whilst satisfying every woman in the audience with little more than an opening of the gullet. All in all, a good whiskey but one that suffers from crippling daddy issues. Given these adverts if you are seen to be drinking it, any prospective mating partner will probably assume that you’d cry after sex.

Roquintin’s Gin

To be honest this is an advert that would be just as effective at any given point of human history on account of the all-saving power and grace of alcohol in this nightmarish hellscape that has become out lives. May as well have another, you’ll only die soon anyway.

Smirnoff Vodka

With the timid face of an alleged child-molester on the front, everyone else is drinking Smirnoff, why not you? Perhaps because I have tastebuds or friendly relations to maintain with everyone around me? Or maybe I’m just not 15 anymore, how about that Woody? That being said, you’re more likely to have an interesting night with a skinfull of vodka than you are with a salad.

Bacardi Rum

Yes, you too can enjoy the high life and marvel as a Poundland equivalent of James Bond pours drink after drink made with the same rum, if only you buy Bacardi! Playing up to the notion that rum tastes foul on its own, especially Bacardi, it was inevitable that people would have experimented with it as often as possible to find something, anything to take away that hideous taste. Now a supermarket staple, Bacardi initially tried to market itself as the beverage of the social climber, eager to make their mark in the highfaluting world of tuxedo-clad, hair-wax drenched guffballs. How the mighty have fallen, nowadays you’re more likely to see Bacardi feature in a Pitbull music video, which is in essence the cultural grave for any high end product.

Lambrini

You may be wondering why this got a mention, why my fingers even bothered to type out the word or why your eyes have the misfortune of reading “Lambrini” and the simple answer is because their adverts have been laughably shite for the last decade or so. Firstly, the cheap sexual innuendo – to those in the know, Lambrini supports your voracious appetite for sexual gratification, which given the demographic of Lambrini drinkers probably translates as “Lambrini wants all 13 year olds to get pregnant.” I don’t know if I’m even allowed to write that, but to hell with it, if Lambrini’s legal team is as inept as their marketing team I’ll be fine. Secondly, has anyone ever seen anyone drink Lambrini from a glass? It’s like when Stella tried to up-market their ad campaigns, but everyone still thinks you’re a violent lout for drinking it, no matter how many smooth piano solos they use to flog it.

*This applies to almost all except Guinness and Johnnie Walker who have both been consistently awesome in their advertising endeavours, hats off and bottoms up to these guys.

#Edits #Adverts #Alcohol #Advertising