jamie doom

To view the ad go here.

Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
One Busch Place
St. Louis, MO 63118

Dick Rogers, President and CEO
DDB Advertising North America
200 East Randolph
Chicago, IL 60601

Dear Budweiser and Dick,

Please, make it stop. I beg you.

Now, I realize the end of the world is nigh. This is one of several truths that have become apparent to me since the first time I saw your commercial entitled Anthem during week one of the NFL football season. Now the playoffs are here, and I am still seeing and hearing Anthem. So before polar caps melt, seas boil, stars drip with blood, Earth cracks along the Equator, or Jessica Simpson says something smart, I need you to pull this commercial from the air.

Several things about Anthem make me weep for our future, and I will be plain about them with you.

1.) The hook to the song/commercial: “This is Budweiser/This is beer.” DDB North America is a large respectable (as much as ad agencies can be) firm. I’m sure the creative talent you employ (even in Chicago) can do better than this. I am certain the first time this commercial aired during week one of the NFL football season, and the first time millions of happy, football-watching minions heard this commercial, one unanimous response was hurled back at the television. Did you hear us in your offices in Chicago? Did you, Anheuser-Busch, hear us in your grain elevators in St. Louis? You should have. It was two words, but sang like a mini-anthem from Phoenix to Seattle to Green Bay to Buffalo to Charlotte to Tampa Bay. I think I yelled it the loudest.

“No Shit.”

Is there really confusion about the nature of your product? Are people often at a loss when forced to classify the liquid you so meticulously bottle and stamp with Born on Dating? Do grocery stores still mistakenly put your product in the dairy section next to rice milk? Have those silly theories about your product actually coming from Clydesdales begun to hurt your bottom line? Did you think America hasn’t been paying attention? Or maybe you thought we forgot what it was you actually made. More probable is that you believe the demographic you are targeting, football fans, is really that dense. And this is what distresses me most.

It is perhaps a chicken-or-the-egg question. Do you give us this excuse for an advertisement because we are drooling Neanderthals? Or. Are we drooling Neanderthals because you give us this excuse for an advertisement? Play it safe. Give us a television spot that isn’t reduced to the most elementary syllogism in logic: A is A, so A is A. Please, give us something harder. If we get it wrong, then we don’t deserve to drink your beer, but at least you’ll know you’ve tried.

You could, if you so choose, even say: “This is Budweiser/This is Good Beer.” See how that small nuance makes the commercial, while still not a strong commercial, a bit more substantial than the present declarative sentence on which you hang your advertising hat? Perhaps, legally, you aren’t allowed to say that because it’s not true. Your beer is not good. Maybe your ad was better before the pesky Legal Department got involved. This is simply the result of the lawyers having their way. If this is the case, please forward my letter on to the suits down in Legal. As it stands, your declaration sounds as convincing as the following slogans:

This is West Virginia/ This is a state to the west of Virginia.

This is Kraft./This is cheese (processed food product).

This is Canada./ This is still a country and has lots of parking.

This is the Church of Christian Science./This is technically a religion too

2.) You call your ad spot Anthem. You make beer, not even very good beer, and you have an anthem? That’s a little, um, insane. Do your employees have to sing it every morning before they pledge allegiance to the Anheuser-Busch flag? Is Budweiser trying to stir up some type of secessionist, beer militia? In your utopist, beer-inspired future, will St. Louis be the new capital? Will the leader of this fledgeling republic be Augustus Busch? Caesar Augustus Busch?

Let me break it down. At the beginning of the ad, the crappy, generic rock starts playing softly, and we see quick shots of a cowboy and his horse (stereotype), an Asian man at his laptop (stereotype much?), an African-American policewoman directing traffic (stereotype), nothing (were there no available images of Hassidic jewelers counting money?), a sunset over a large city, a fly over of a bucolic small town (red state), a mail box (what says beer like the mail?), freshly hung laundry flapping in the breeze, a young man in a white t-shirt and a red hat talking to an old man in a white t-shirt and a red hat over a white fence (I do tear up a bit for .05 seconds), a housetop party, a subway, a garage band, a football team, people tail-gating wearing the same colors as the football team, a bus driver (I couldn’t find her can of Budweiser, but I’m sure it’s hidden in the picture), rail workers, more cops…this time on horseback(cops and firemen make it into more beer commercials than beer, which makes you wonder who needs the breathalyzers), a man in a tie and a dress shirt next to a man in a flannel shirt at a bar (both drinking some type of new wheat and grain based drink that Budweiser has invented), guys sitting on Harley’s (”Drink our beer, then go sit on your bike, but please don’t drive off and terrorize Rolling Stones fans” isn’t as catchy), then we see the city of St. Louis. This ad is so sweet and apple pie that it hurts my teeth. It also hurts my hand, but that’s because I shove sharp objects into the flesh off my hand to distract myself from the pain. Still, I don’t mind a little sappy Americana. But then I hear the words:

“This is what I call mine/This is true/This is Budweiser.”

That’s when the music cranks up, and the proud Die Zeit ohne Beispiel inspired Budweiser images start: grain elevators with the letters B-U-D-W-E-I-S-E-R painted in Budweiser’s national colors (red), Clydesdales, cold draft Bud being emptied out on the ground, and Bud’s poster child, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (He is also a spokesperson for Wrangler Jeans. Yep, they still make Wrangler jeans, and they have a spokesperson. Maybe your ad agency could help them out after you get done making a new ad for Budweiser.)

All I wanted to do was watch some football, but instead I am being re-educated by fanatical, conniving brewmeisters. Plus blood is coming from my ears due to a genre of music called “country-rock.”

3.) “This is where I live/This is where I’m from/This is what I believe when the day is done.” This is where I conclude my letter to you. First you dumb it down by stating the obvious, then you try to get us all to drink the Budweiser flavored Kool-Aid, and then you go way out there and equate drinking Budweiser with some type of Kierkegaardian existential leap of faith. “This is what I believe in when the day is done?” You still just make beer, right? Is there something else I should know about? When I contemplate those large questions in life and when I think to myself, “What do I believe in?” I am quite certain Budweiser won’t be one of the top five million or so things that pop into my brain.

In case I have been too negative, let me concede your commercial is catchy. The song sticks in my head. This is not a large accomplishment. I still have Cindi Lauper’s song, True Colors, stuck in my head (and I rarely question my sexuality). That Band-Aid song is still stuck (no pun intended) in my head, but I don’t use Band-Aid Brand (I am a real man, so I use electrical tape and old socks when I get a wound). You also have some gosh-darn nice images in your ad.

But this is the only commercial I have ever seen that manages to shoot too low and too high all at once. This is the only commercial I have ever seen that results immediately in the gnashing of teeth and the putting-on of sack cloth and ashes. Every time I see this commercial, I expect to see in that montage a brief image of fire and Nero playing his violin.

Please, I beg you. Pull this commercial from regular rotation during football games. You could even move it over to Lifetime where nobody will ever see it. Make it stop. You win. It’s beer. I’m not prepared to argue the point. I am at your mercy.

Yours Truly,

Jamie Doom