Hold My Beer

This week's cartoon wasn't the first time I've drawn a cartoon about a Budweiser product. The company has apparently progressed a lot since the last time, however.

in In Step Newsmagazine, Milwaukee, Dec. 11, 1997

The lizards in my cartoon had lately become the spokescritters for Budweiser, taking over from a trio of frogs who had simply croaked out the name of their sponsor in a more memorable ad campaign. The lizards may have had more personality than the frogs, but before long were replaced by the "Wazzaaaaap" guys.

In my nine years drawing cartoons to accompany the editorials of the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, I occasionally had to address issues concerning the business that made Milwaukee famous.

Budweiser again features in this one, about the St. Louis brewery's effort to have its products sold at Milwaukee's premier summertime festival. At the time, Summerfest patrons' only choices were from Wisconsin-based brewing companies, and I am fairly sure that they still are.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Feb. 28, 1997

The punch line references a Lite Beer from Miller ad campaign of the time featuring the offbeat ideas of supposed ad creator "Dick."

There's a reason you don't remember Dick.

It was, quite possibly, the worst ad campaign of the decade.

For more than two years, Miller Brewing Co. bombarded television viewers with multiple images of weirdness: a half-naked man walking out of a field, his privates obscured by an oversized bottle cap; a fat, bald guy dancing cheek-to-jowl with a Great Dane; a shapely blond magician's assistant who winds up with furry white mice in her armpits. The TV ads, one learned, were the work of "Dick," an advertising "superstar."

Was this any way to sell Lite Beer?

By now, the answer has become obvious. When Milwaukee-based Miller euthanized the "Dick" campaign last month after almost $250 million in media spending, the ads had failed to arrest Miller Lite's decade-long slide. Miller Lite's market share slipped an additional 2 percent over the life of the campaign, while sales of Bud Light, the No. 1 light brew, grew robustly. Even Coors Light was within striking distance of overtaking the brand that invented the business. 

What made the Lite campaign particularly unusual was the fallout that followed it. Instead of firing the ad agency that created the ads, as companies typically do in troubled times, Miller's parent, Philip Morris Cos., this month canned the company executives responsible for it.

Looking back, I'm somewhat surprised that the Business Journal, a generally pro-boosterism paper, let me get away with drawing such a run-down, foreboding place.  

in Business Journal, Milwaukee, April 5, 2002

Maybe it had something to do with the craptastic "Dick" ads, and maybe it didn't, but five years later, Miller was bought by SAB (South African Breweries), headquartered in Woking, England. This was, of course, more than a decade since the end of South Africa's apartheid regime, but what other possible cartoon possibilities were there in the foreign take-over of the last major hometown brewing company?

in Business Journal, Milwaukee, April 19, 2002

Especially when the editors came up with yet another editorial about the sale a mere two issues later?

in Business Journal, Milwaukee, Feb. 13, 2004

It was probably unfair of me to reference a decidedly unfashionable brew in this cartoon lauding the revitalization of Milwaukee's central city. The font on the keg mimics that of Old Milwaukee beer, founded as a "value-priced" lager by Schlitz Brewing Co. and currently owned by Pabst. And I'll say this for Old Milwaukee: they make a better tasting non-alcoholic beer than most.

The City of Milwaukee has done a lot in the past quarter century or so to turn what had been acres of empty warehouses (and areas that looked like the dead end where "Dick" sent the Bud truck drivers) into posh lofts, trendy restaurants, game rooms, and offices.

Which is not to gloss over the fact that there are plenty of neighborhoods with ample room for improvement.

in Business Journal, Milwaukee, May 9, 2003

The grass is always greener and golder on the other side of the fence.

Turning at last to my work for Q Syndicate: until this week, I haven't had a whole lot to say to my LGBTQ+ readers about beer over the past 25 years. I have, however had occasion many times for the setting of my cartoons to be in bars, so I'll close with one of them.

for Q Syndicate, July, 2001 (held for later release)

I remarked in Thursday's post that gay bars have lost business due to hook-up apps on the internet. I hear that millennials these days don't dig alcohol as much as their older cohorts, but the plight of the gay bar is not nearly as dire as I portrayed in this cartoon. 

Gay (and lesbian) bars are not exclusively about hooking up. (Not all of them, anyway.) As long as there are queer people who want places to dance, gossip, ogle go-go boys, play Lil Nas X on the video juke box, and see the sort of drag shows that are not fit for public libraries, gay bars will have a role to play.

Meanwhile, whither AOL Instant Messenger, huh?