Somewhere in a 1950s conference room, a grown man said the words “what if the cigarettes had legs,” and nobody stopped him. He got a raise. Tobacco money bought thirty years of American airtime, and the unbelievable cigarette commercials it produced ran at dinnertime, in front of children, with the sponsor’s name in the credits…
Beer marketing has produced more brain damage than the beer. The dumbest beer commercials ever made were not accidents, and they were not cheap. Every one of them survived a pitch meeting, a legal review, and a client who nodded and said the money was well spent. Thirty seconds later, a nation lost the ability…
American television once tried to sell syrup, sneakers, beer, and tacos by cramming entire cultures into a costume, an accent, or a mascot with the dignity of a gas-station air freshener. These American commercials did not merely age badly. They aged in public, under studio lighting, with a media budget and enough approving executives…