Beer - If You're Tough Enough

Beer

Director: Patrick Kelly

Men will drink the beer that makes them feel more like men. –B.D. Tucker

You have a slight image problem. […] You’re just not black enough. –B.D. Tucker

Whip out your Norbecker. –Merle Draggett

We have a film to make, beer to sell. There’s 220 million Americans out there can’t wait to have their minds twisted and bent. And if I can’t do it, by god, nobody can. –Buzz Beckerman

You did it, honey: you fooled them with a goddamned bottle of beer. What an old fool I am for making movies, making people laugh, cry. It’s crap compared to what you’ve done. –Buzz Beckerman

It was a hell of a ride, B.D., but it just doesn’t seem right anymore. –Merle Draggett

To quote Netflix.com:

With her client's beer sales falling flat, ad agency executive B.D. Tucker (Loretta Swit) is desperately trying to come up with new marketing ideas and senses an opportunity when three losers receive unwarranted credit for preventing a bar from being robbed. The agency quickly hires the overnight heroes for its new campaign -- which turns out to be as successful as it is tasteless. Dick Shawn's send-up of talk-show host Phil Donahue is a must-see.

This movie stars M*A*S*H's Major Houlihan, Boy Meets World's Alan Matthews and Dodgeball's Patches O'Houlihan. It satirizes the advertising industry, a bit like Thank You for Not Smoking and Josie and the Pussycats, both of which came out more than 15 years later.

B.D. Tucker (M*A*S*H's Major Houlihan) is given the task of bolstering beer sales by designing an ad campaign that appeals to the working man. The first spot is an exaggeration of the bar holdup that made the three soon-to-be commercial stars famous. And the subsequent spots depict the men as chauvinistic, sex-crazed "men's men." The more offensive the commercials, the bigger the sales increase.

It makes me think about the commercials of today. It's common knowledge that "sex sells." But today's ad agents  are much more sensitive to political correctness and to walking the fine line of what is sexy to women and what is sexy to men. Products are less and less geared toward one sex, with some exceptions of course (I'm pretty sure the commercials for feminine hygiene products are under no illusions that men give two shakes about them). Even products like perfumes and colognes are less likely to focus on only men or only women as consumers – they often appeal to the opposite sex, aiming to entice purchase for a loved one.

What's the reason for the change to at least political awareness, if not complete political correctness? I believe it's affected, at least in part, by social media and the power of the consumer. While word-of-mouth has always been a factor in brand advertising and credibility, companies now have to worry about word-of-tweet, word-of-Facebook and word-of-blog. One person's negative response to an ad can soon infiltrate the minds of hundreds, thousands or millions of people via social media. Companies have to watch their POVs and react quickly to negative comments left in any number of places. Pissing someone off does a lot more damage today than it did in the '80s.

But, of course, this movie isn't a literal depiction of the advertising world in the '80s; if it were, it wouldn't be considered satire. It is, however, an entertaining caricature of it. While I doubt any agency (or the FCC, for that matter) would allow a commercial with such a blatant allusion to oral sex as is in one of the commercials created in the movie, there isn't much else that they won't do.

My takeaway: We are a media-driven society, often showing our manipulability to others' influence by believing what the advertising agencies tell us we believe, value and stand for. And real men drink Norbecker!