Cool Papa Beast

A while back copywriter Tim and I were working on the Milwaukee Best promotions account. The product, for those of you who have somehow avoided it in your college days, is the trailer park of beers for Miller Brewing Company. Its’ nickname is “the Beast.”

Client wanted to do POS for the urban (read: black) market. At this time, the papers were full of complaints about liquor and cigarette companies targeting the African American market. People felt they were being taken advantage of by large companies that didn’t give anything back to the communities. We wanted to do something other than the usual, but were having a problem identifying a solution.

Gock. It rhymes with…

One of the more unusual projects at josebatalla (www.josebatalla.com) was a new line of men’s underwear called Gock. The name is German for rooster.

The creator of Gock claimed that this was the male equivalent of the Wonder Bra. As both designer/art director and occasional copywriter at the agency, I had to come up with copy for the ads and website for this garment. The copy had to appeal to a wide range of men – from the gay market to athletes (client says it is great for bike riding, ahem) to readers of GQ and Maxim who would like to ‘emphasize’ their manly attributes. And we were asked not to use the word ‘ring’ in relation to another word.

I have to admit; it’s perhaps the most creative – and careful – copy I’ve written in a long time. Here’s an excerpt from one of the introductory magazine ads.

Fiestas

It started as a very simple project. The previous year the client gave distributors a trip to Las Vegas to watch a boxing event if they sell a certain level of product. This was wrapped up in a Hispanic/Latin themed holiday; Fiestas Patrias. For those gringos out there unacquainted with the event, this is the Independence Day celebration for Mexico and about eight or nine other Central American and South American countries. All of which fall within a day or two of each other and are called Fiestas Patrias.

This year, client decided to pull back on the free trips and boxing overlay. Just run a photo of a pretty girl and some vaguely Latin themed graphics on POS to splash around on- and off-premise.

Now give a good art director and writer a simple job like that and you’d think they would be happy. It’s so easy. Unless they, like most good pros in this business, find such projects don’t make any sense.

Just art on a stick? Why should anyone care? Why spend money on landfill?