You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Miller Lite beer

The Promotions:

The Pitch:
Yes, all rules governing male conduct were made by guys tipsy on beer. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

There’s an advertising trick I like to call half-irony. That’s where you associate your product with (X), which will appeal to some people, but will turn off others. Ah, but there’s a twist! You add a layer of irony to the presentation, where you poke some fun at (X), and at yourself for trying to use (X) to sell your product.

Thus, you create a Schrodinger’s Parody. If someone thinks (X) is stupid, then your ad is a parody of (X), so they end up laughing with you, not at you. However, if someone genuinely likes (X), the jokes at (X)’s expense are light enough that it won’t prevent them from appreciating your association with (X) on a surface level.

(How well this works, of course, varies depending on the execution.)

This tactic is particularly common in ads targeting men. You can draw in a lot of men with sexualized depictions of women and rhetoric about what “Real Men” are like – but without the shield of half-irony, you run the risk of, if not offending much of the population, at least making them feel like your product isn’t really for them.

We’ve covered several such commercials here on Ad Space:

“Real Men Eat Whoppers”
“Food Porn Gets Literal”
“Dr. Pepper 10: IT’S NOT FOR WOMEN!”
“Wait … GoDaddy Isn’t a Porn Site?”

Given that sort of company, these Miller Lite ads are some of the more clever and tasteful takes on the idea. In fact, the appeals to machismo are so low-key, I kinda wonder why they’re even there. Like, if you made the Square Table a mixed gender group, most of these commercials wouldn’t have to change at all (aside from the catchphrase “Man Law”).

It’s this weird thing where beer is seen as a stereotypically masculine drink (there’s a whole Reddit thread full of theories on why that is), and the beer companies all seem, not just to accept that, but to lean into it at every opportunity. That there’s another half of the population they could be marketing to: doesn’t seem to interest them.

At least, not until last year, when Miller Lite decided to go in the exact opposite direction: