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:
Bud Light beer

The Promotions:

The Pitch:
We guarantee, if you apologize to someone like this, whatever you were apologizing for will no longer be what they’re most mad at you about.

The first and biggest hurdle you must cross when designing a commercial is simply getting the viewer’s attention – bypassing the part of their brain that’s been trained to tune out advertisements, the same way it tunes out the sound of traffic or the fact that beer actually tastes terrible. And these Bud Light ads, they’re unique enough and funny enough and have a cute enough looking robot, they pass that challenge.

But once you’ve got their attention, you then must ask: what sort of impression or you leaving them with?

Making ’em laugh, sure, that’s generally a good strategy. People enjoy laughing, and if they have that enjoyable experience while seeing your product on the screen, they’ll hopefully associate the two.

Except, the thing with comedy is, a lot of it’s based on people behaving badly. Folks acting in stupid, inappropriate, or downright bizarre ways – it probably accounts for at least half the humor you see on TV. And if that’s the sort of humor you’re using in your commercial, viewers might get the idea that you indulge in that sort of bad behavior, too, or that by buying your product they’ll be associating themself with that sort of thing.

So while I think these ads are really quite funny (“Quick, give ’em the check” is a great closing line), I’m not sure they actually, y’know, make Bud Light look all that good.