Cool as folk

Scared of beards

Fosters has launched a quirky new series of ads promoting its Carlton Draught beer. The ‘Any Excuse’ campaign sees a bizarre folk music trio (with creative facial hair) performing musical renditions to various male body parts in order to sing the beer’s praises. Each ad sees the heavily knitted warblers composing odes about the various different parts of a man’s anatomy and how they tell him he needs a cold Carlton Draft.

The seven ads Tingle, Elbow, Leg, Weenis, Wart, Nose, and Bump are currently doing the rounds online and are reminiscent of Reeves and Mortimer’s Mulligan and O’Hare. Apparently Fosters put this promotion on the back burner for a while after completion as they considered whether or not to use it. The commercials were stripped form TV schedules just before launch late last month, amid concerns the campaign could offend some viewers. The campaign will now run online to gauge viral effect and public reception before roiling out to a more mainstream TV and cinema audience.

Carlton’s ‘Big Ad‘ viral from 2006 won 30 awards globally and another recent campaign ‘Flash beer‘ saw a man reenacting a scene from Flashdance. ”I believe our target market will go looking for Carlton Draught material online. And online, it’s unable to offend anyone,” said Vincent Ruiu, group marketing manager at Carlton Brands.

As with any slightly off the wall ad campaign there is a very fine line between hilarious and repulsive. Get it right and you’ve got a viral hit. Get it wrong and you’ve also got a viral hit – but for all the wrong reasons. There is also the knock on effect of how your product is associated with the comedy you are providing.  There needs to be a perceived distance between what is awkward or unappealing about your ad. It needs to be funny ‘over there’ and not directly related to the experience of the product.