Miller Lite - Advertising

Advertising

Miller Lite's long-running "Great Taste...Less Filling!" advertising campaign was ranked by Advertising Age magazine as the 8th-best advertising campaign in history. The campaign was developed by the advertising agency McCann-Erickson Worldwide. In the prime of the campaign, television commercials typically portrayed a Miller Lite drinker noting its great taste followed by another who observed that it was less filling. This usually led to a parody of Wild West saloon fights in which every patron got involved in the dispute for no real reason, though in this case it was always a shouting match, and blows were never thrown. The commercials were closed with a voiceover from actor Eddie Barth, who read the slogan, "Lite Beer from Miller: Everything you've always wanted in a beer. And less.".

To attract 'Joe Sixpack' to a lite beer, these commercials started to feature both elite ex-athletes such as Ray Nitschke, Ben Davidson, and Bubba Smith, but also oddball cultural figures such as Mickey Spillane(accompanied by a blonde, Lee Meredith, who is better known for her role as Ulla, the secretary in The Producers, 1968), and most notably Rodney Dangerfield. As the series of commercials went on, it started featuring athletes and celebrities, who were not necessarily champions. Some commercials from this era include:

• Former Major League catcher and Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker being rousted from his good seat at a ballgame, and being escorted by an usher, commenting, "I must be in the front rowwwwwww", and ending up the last row of the nosebleed seats.

• In 1978 Joe Frazier, famous heavyweight boxing champion but on-screen caption says "Joe Frazier, Famous Heavyweight Singer", as part of a barbershop quartet walk into a full bar and sing to "do like Smokin' Joe" and go on to sing about its advantages. There is then a moment's silence which follows with a roar of applause.

• Marv Throneberry, who was one of most famously hapless members of the 1962 New York Mets, wondering over and over, "I don't know why I was asked to do this commercial."

• Former Baltimore Orioles first baseman Boog Powell and former umpire Jim Honochick doing a spot together, with Honochick totally unaware whom he is standing next to, until he puts his glasses on at the end, and exclaims, "Hey - you're Boog Powell!"

• And perhaps most famously, when Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner were in the middle of their legendary 1970s era feuds, they did one with Martin saying, "Tastes great, George", and Steinbrenner replying, "Less filling, Billy!" back and forth until Steinbrenner finally says, "You're fired!" to Martin (changed to "You're hired!" when Martin was re-hired by Steinbrenner in real life), and Martin says, "Not Again!"

The number of athletes and celebrities that did these ads grew to such a number, and the popular nature of the ads, led to yearly ads featuring all of the stars, generally in some sort of competition between the 'Less Fillings' and the 'Taste Greats'. Generally the ads usually ended up having Rodney Dangerfield being somehow the goat of the losing team.

As part of this campaign, Miller Brewing ran a series of highly distinctive television commercials in the winter of 1993–1994 showing several fictitious "extreme sports" such as "Wiener Dog Drag Racing" (which featured two wiener dogs racing each other at a drag racing strip), "Sumo High Dive" (which depicted a Japanese sumo wrestler diving off a platform) and "The Miss Perfect Face-Off" (which featured beauty pageant contestants playing ice hockey). The tag line that followed was, "If you can combine great taste with less filling, you can combine anything."

In 1995-1996, Miller Lite ran the "Life Is Good" campaign, which showed Miller Lite drinkers' aspirational transition to more fun via a Miller Lite bottle tap, like "Beach Rewind", where three men on a beach admired three beautiful women walking by, and could rewind, and enjoy, the scene repeatedly. The campaign was developed by Leo Burnett Company, and received the American Marketing Association EFFIE award for outstanding advertising effectiveness. The campaign included celebrities such as Larry Bird, Keith Jackson, and Richard Karn.

Beginning January 12, 1997, a series of surreal Miller Lite ads, purportedly made by a man named "Dick", began to air. They were hallmarked as such either at the beginning or the end of the commercial. The campaign was developed by Minneapolis-based ad agency Fallon. The series of "Dick" commercials was directed by Gerald Casale of the new wave band Devo. Such commercials include one where a middle-aged man sees the message "twist to open" on a Miller Lite bottle cap, and he proceeds to do the Twist.

In 2002, "Catfight", another high-profile commercial in the long-running "Great Taste...Less Filling" campaign, was denounced by critics as depicting women as sexual objects. The commercial featured two extraordinarily beautiful women, a blonde (Tanya Ballinger) and a brunette (Kitana Baker), discussing the classic "Great Taste/Less Filling" debate, except they both ended up stripped, soaked, beaten and covered in mud. An uncensored version of the commercial ended in the muddy beauties sharing a passionate kiss. The girls received much publicity from the commercial, and later starred in a few related commercials, videos and events.

In 2006, Miller Lite had an advertising campaign called Man Laws featuring celebrities that include actor Burt Reynolds, professional wrestler Triple H, comedian Eddie Griffin, and former American football player Jerome Bettis. The celebrities and other actors were in a "Men of the Square Table", a group meeting where they discuss different situations that should be included in the "Man Laws". The ads were developed by the ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky/Miami, and were directed by comedy film director Peter Farrelly.

In the sport of NASCAR, Miller began advertising their Miller Genuine Draft beer on the #27 Pontiac of Rusty Wallace (later #2) in 1990. Wallace switched to a Ford in 1994, and Miller switched their sponsorship to Miller Lite in 1997. The sponsorship of that team continues to this day, now the #2 Dodge, driven by Brad Keselowski.

Other promotion in motor sports included the sponsoring of Don Prudhomme's Larry Dixon-driven NHRA top fuel dragster from 1997–2007. Prior to that, Dixon was sponsored by Miller Genuine Draft.

In June 2010, commercials premiered featuring actresses Lindsey McKeon and Nadine Heimann as bartenders.