Despite what your friend with a marketing degree tells you, advertisements are not the time to be subversive. For many reasons, not the least of which is that you're selling a product, not making art. Ad executives will insist that they are, but that's usually just a default defense mechanism when they receive backlash for their insensitive ad campaign. Advertisers court controversy sometimes hoping that the dissection in the media in the following days will gain them even more exposure (negative or not), essentially doubling down their advertising dollar. But often, these types of commercials--whether blatant in their offensiveness or not--end up further distancing a big part of the population from their product, which is...kind of the opposite intent of marketing.
8. Miller Lite's Man Up Campaign
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUJ36nFdOyg First of all, every light beer in the world tastes like stewed buttholes, so Miller Lite needs to stop pretending their product is actually different from every other major brewer. It's not. In fact, on the basis of their marketing schemes alone, they're worse. Back in 2010, they started their misguided "Man Up" campaign, which sought to target the part of the population that still believes the "traditional" (aka sexist) notions of what identify "a real man" include wearing wide-legged jeans and...not riding scooters? Also, if you don't drink our beer you might as well be wearing a skirt, pussy. Honestly, it wouldn't be surprising if Miller Lite came up with the ideas for these commercials while only half-watching old episodes of Home Improvement. At best, they're designed to steal away the rough and tumble dudes who apparently drink other light beers (because that's the part of the population that cares about calories), but at worst, they reinforce all of the most outdated notions of manhood while slapping everyone in the face with their blatant sexism.
