Posted on 09/29/2007 7:05:14 AM PDT by toddlintown
In a 1988 Wall Street Journal article, a Miller spokeman begged off on the idea that the brewery’s marketing efforts were concentrating heavily on the gay market. It’s obvious that that is no longer the case. Miller has become notorious in its open marketing to gays. In a sense, the old Frederick Miller brewery has come out of the closet, but in a number of past instances, the brewery has repeatedly tripped over its threshold.
Back in 1999, the brewery ran into problems with its more liberated approach in courting the gay community. There was little question what group of San Francisco beer drinkers Miller was targeting with a TV ad featuring a shirtless muscle man. The spot was supposed to air on a cable program in San Francisco and feature a “Barechest Men” calendar for sale, the proceeds going to a local AIDS-funding group.
The combination of Miller sponsoring a photo calendar of beefy hunks and indirectly raising funds for AIDS victims was too much for some straights in the San Francisco community. After loads of protests by conservative groups, the thirty-second ad was pulled. A Miller spokesman tried to lay the idea for the commercial at the feet of a local advertising agency and not at the door of the brewery’s Milwaukee headquarters. (It’s interesting to note that this is the same excuse they’re now using; this Folsum fiasco was the doing of the local distributor, not the suits in Milwaukee. Sure.)
(Excerpt) Read more at beerinfood.wordpress.com ...
I am never going to drink another Miller beer as long as I live!
No more ponies for me!
I have now given up Miller and my favorite, Lienies.
Go to hell Miller management!
My Hub has been a Miller Lite drinker for eons.........NO MORE! A local talk radio personality also has a fantastic restaurant and he had his staff pull every Miller product in his establishment. Now that’s walking the walk and talking the talk.
I used to drink Miller Lite, until I got into the microbrewed stuff - and there are imports I like. Still, if I’m at a party where Miller is offered, I’ll drink it. BUT I WON’T ANYMORE! And I’d like to inform the stupid folks at Miller that a lot of my friends are blue collar type people & Miller is what a lot of them drink - I will go out of my way to let these people know what type of crap that Miller is sponsoring. They won’t like it either.
I hope this really puts a hurt on their business.
Miller is not an American beer. It is owned by South African principles.
This is the letter I sent to two Miller VP’s two days ago. Feel free to copy or criticize anything in it.
September 27, 2007
Mr. Randy Ransom
Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
Miller Brewing Company
Mr. Kevin Self
Senior Vice President
Strategy & Planning
Miller Brewing Company
Dear Sirs,
I am writing to register my dismay at your overt support of the recent Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco and its accompanying sacrilegious paraphernalia. While I used to enjoy a Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss on occasion, NO MORE. Your company has chosen to identify itself with a group that considers me and my religious beliefs to be comical and irrelevant.
In doing so (i.e. by having YOUR logo on a poster mocking and perverting the Last Supper), you have violated one basic principle and one stated guideline of the Beer Institute’s Advertising and Marketing Code. The second principle of your industry’s code states,
“Brewers should adhere to contemporary standards of good taste applicable to all commercial advertising and consistent with the medium or context in which the
advertising appears.”
Stated guideline number 7 in that same code reads:
“Beer advertising and marketing materials should not employ religion or religious themes.”
I do not pretend that the small amount of business I have given Miller over the years should mean that much to you. But I do promise you that until Miller repudiates not only the specific advertisement to which I have previously referred but also its support of the Folsom Street Fair I will make it a point to keep everyone I know from purchasing and consuming Miller products.
Thank you for your kind consideration.
Hey, I think you're on to something here.
Copyright it, quick!
I love it!
Leni
Great logic happening here:
Some gays like Beer.
Miller is a Beer.
Miller likes all people to drink Miller Beer.
All gays are people, but not all people are gay.
And some gays will drink Miller Beer.
Miller doesn’t mind. Miller likes it if some gays will drink Miller Beer. Miller will ask them nicely to drink their Miller Beer: that is how Miller stays in business.
Miller actually doesn’t mind who drinks Miller Beer: Miller likes People to drink Miller Beer.
But holdonaminit! Let’s draw some conclusions here:
THEREFORE, if *I* drink Miller Beer, I will be drinking the same kind of beer that some GAYS drink! (Definitely True!)
THEREFORE, Miller likes that! (Also Definitely True!)
THEREFORE, I might be accidentally be mistaken for being Gay if anyone else sees me drinking Miller Beer! (Ummm, posters like Ken522 and Drango and a few others seem to think so. I’d say the jury is probably still out on that!)
If you got nothing better to drink, then by all means drink Miller Beer, whether you be gay or straight. But if you have say a Steinlager or a Speight’s Gold or a Tui’s India Ale or a Canterbury Draft available you’d be a fool not to drink that instead. Or even in a pinch, Lion Red.
But if Miller is what is on tap, and if it is cold and you are thirsty, why punish yourself? Go on! Nobody will seriously think you are GAY for drinking Miller! I promise...
I wonder how the latte colored man in the center would react to a hangman’s noose being waved in his face.
If you seriously think that the reason people are going to boycott Miller is so people won't think they are gay, you have a serious brain problem, I.E.: you don't have one that functions! People are boycotting miller because of the last supper ad and the ridicule heaped on Christianity. I am not a Christian and this ad deeply offends me. Let them put Mohammed, the queer killer, on a poster dressed in leather surrounded by gay followers also dressed in peek-a-boo leather and see how fast miller would run then.
I would say, after reading your post and observing how you try to play the ridicule card on the people who are boycotting miller, that you are queer.
I didn’t know we were allowed to use the word “queer”.
I sent them a scathing letter as well. I also notified Miller that I am passing this information on to everyone on my email list. They will be as disgusted by it as I am.
I am sick and tired of it always being “open hunting season” on Christians. Anyone that feels the way I do needs to start being very vocal about it. It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.
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