Allilgator shirts = springtime, romance, invulnerability?

Super bowl ads.

This nice-looking ad for alligator shirts (marketer = Izod) depicts a woman paddling alone in icy water in a covered-deck sea kayak. She's wearing gloves and a nice sweater, but she has no PFD (life-jacket) and no self-rescue gear.

If a person like her, paddling without a TV crew nearby, capsized, her life expectancy would be about five minutes.

This kind of media depiction causes people to die. Alligator shirts aren't good protection against cold water, or stupidity.

Scissors, paper, rock, weak beer!

Now I remember why I don't watch TV much. This Super Bowl ad for a kind of weak beer called "Bud Light" reminded me. A fifty-something white guy in an untucked dress shirt unexpectedly pitches a rock at the forehead of a twentysomething white guy in a sweatshirt to get the last bottle of beer in the tub of ice.

"I threw paper! Groan." "I threw a rock." "Refreshingly smooth Bud Light. Always worth it." Great.

Just so we don't miss the point, at the end of the spot a black guy in a short-sleeve shirt walks by the groaning victim, slaps his palm, and says "low five!"

A quick Google search turns up signs that this Super Bowl ad has been supported for quite a while by a guerrilla marketing campaign promoting Rock Paper Scissors.

There's a newly formed society called the USA Rock Paper Scissors League. It has Bud Light on the front door page.

Their PR people managed to get the Wall Street Journal to take the bait; on March 2006, they ran this story.

I guess I should be happy that these beer marketers had a successful guerrilla marketing campaign. I guess I should be laughing at the humor of their tv ad. But, umm, I don't get it. Maybe I should keep a rock in my pocket when I go to barbeques, in case I really need the last beer. After all, I'm a fiftysomething guy, and I sometimes wear untucked dress shirts.