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October 11, 2005
I Heart The Girl In The Moon
The Goddess of Beer -- and America!
So I hate to play into the hands of some annoying "Director of Permission Marketing"-type person from some goofy international drinks comglomerate, but I really, really can't say enough about that new Miller High Life commercial. I love it. I love The Girl In The Moon. It's really awesome. You should check it out.
(Here's a link to it. Link away, and write about it on your blogs. If enough of us write about it on our blogs, then maybe someone will do a podcast about it. And if enough people do The Girl In The Moon podcasts, pretty soon we'll have a viral marketing phenomena and there will be many powerpoints and ad industry journalists singing its praises!)
Still, just because we're aware of the marketing trick doesn't mean it didn't work perfectly. There's Miller High Life in my fridge. I didn't even put it there. A friend brought it over for football. (I can see the goddam powerpoint slide in my head: "TGITM initial campaign sales lift: 13%; category market share up 19%.") I'd like to be more cynical, but I can't help myself: I really like the ad. It's actually led me to wonder if it was okay to have a crush on a disembodied female voice, specifically one that whispers about beer? And America?
Take a bow, good people at Miller High Life and/ or Miller High Life's agency of record -- y'all really knocked it out of the park with this The Girl In The Moon thing. It's exceptionally fantastic. They had been taking Miller High Life to kind of a crappy place with those bacon-sandwich-old-fat-guy ads -- smart enough to laugh at itself, but without the proper respect for itself as a brand and its identity as part of the Miller portfolio. The Girl In The Moon is almost orthogonal to that one. It acknowledges that it is an older brand, and that it is a beer for men, but from there it takes off, dialing down the snarkiness and irony (the wink's there, but in a more respectful way) and creating a warm/ sincere/ nostalgia/ America/ ticker tape/ WWII bomber thing. And it doesn't feel false or insincere at all. It actually works. More than that, I'm glad they did it. Miller High Life, you deserved it. Go ahead, call yourself the Champagne of Beer, and don't be ashamed of it. You've earned it.
The commercials are gorgeous -- written pitch-perfect and mixed with an absolutely luscious set of still images with just some minimal movement and digital doctorings. The images (presented in a fuzzy photo-album slide show format) are a tour of the last 100 years that's almost the flip side of Forrest Gump -- all the nostalgia, only featuring very few people you know: the family photos, the old timey ads, Ray Charles, Bill Walton ("Great minds that have given us reason to celebrate"? Someone's winking...), the tender embraces, the sun shining through a woman's hair. Sure, they lay it on pretty thick, but it doesn't feel as tacky as it could. It's got to be the writing that keeps it above water. The whole "moments" thing has exactly the right folksy sincerity, and it doesn't sound as hackneyed as it could. It actually works. Maybe the most obnoxious thing about the excellence of the spot is that you could pretty much make that commercial in Powerpoint. Seriously. With roughly the built-in animation features. Amazing.
(If I have any complaint with the spot, it's the use of the True Romance music. That's cheating. If you're going to make a commercial this good, you should take the trouble to come up with your own damn music. Also, I really like True Romance, so I didn't hate hearing that song. It just seems like cutting a corner they didn't need to cut -- just rip off the song with a discount variation thereof if you need to. Minor quibble.)
The nice thing about this The Girl In The Moon thing is that they're using it as a springboard for a bigger rebranding for this beer, and a big part of said rebranding is going to be this actual girl -- the one from the logo who is also apparently whispering to us in the voiceover for the video ads. She whispers to us about memories, sports, meeting your wife, making out with your wife, the meaning of life, etc. Later in the ad, The Girl In The Moon becomes conspiratorial, and offers to let us in on some secrets. She says:
"We go hand in hand, you and I. I'm the girl in the moon. And I want to tell you eveything I know. Everything there is to savor. Everything. I'll see you soon."
And that's when it hits you -- the people at Miller High Life and/ or Miller High Life's agency of record aren't just creating a new visual identity for their brand, they're inventing a Goddess. A Goddess of Beer. And America. She knows everything, and she's going to tell you all her secrets. About beer. And America. Bow to the Goddess of Beer!
And why not? Beer ads are about sex -- why not make one that's actually sexy? A flirty young woman whispering in your ear about "everything there is savor"? And she claims to know everything? Sounds lovely -- how do I make a burnt offering to her? And think of how much more effective it is that the bikini-clad skiing volleyball women who are the denizens of most beer ads. (There's a woman in a bikini in The Girl In The Moon ad, but it's a still photo, and the photo is more about the sun behind her than anything else. Seriously.) What a fantastic response to pornified American culture -- just when everyone else is tearing off their clothes, The Girl In The Moon is content to be a tease.
This is apparently a down year for Hollywood. Hmmm. It doesn't seem to be a down year for the people who make the ads. Hollywood makes a lot of money creating fictions, but so do large consumer marketing companies, and this new Miller High Life fiction is extremely compelling. At a macro level, ads are only getting better -- more sneaky, more clever, and more seductive. (You'll know it's hit when people start dressing like The Girl In The Moon for Halloween. Maybe not this year. Maybe.) I guess what I'm trying to say is that The Girl In The Moon is a strong ad, a strong idea, and I'm powerless to resist its impact on my perception of the Miller High Life brand and/ or line of products and its influence on related purchase intent(s), be they on-premise or at retail.
Tip of the cap, then: SAVOR THE HIGH LIFE.
Posted by thatkid at October 11, 2005 9:50 AM under
Biznass
Comments
see also: http://www.slate.com/id/2127699/?nav=fo
Do you remember the song in Badlands?
Posted by: micah at October 12, 2005 5:22 PM
Oh and good call on the Badlands music...
Posted by: cat at October 13, 2005 8:05 AM
So i read this post at 12:08a EDT, and the web ad is still loading at 12:13a EDT. Miller's evidently got a great creative AOR, but their web team is somewhat shite.
12:14a EDT - watched it twice. Very pretty. But the demo must be M35+, watches Fox News >3 times per week. Maybe even older. This is an ad for my father. The nostalgia football shots aren't even from the 70s. I think they're surrendering the elusive M25-34 target to Coors Light and the Love Train. Which hurts to think about.
Posted by: Chris at October 13, 2005 9:29 AM
The house was built TOO SMALL:
Posted by: PJD at October 13, 2005 10:50 PM
The music combined with the BW photos is what really gets me. The True Romance soundtrack, of which I own and have listened to many many times, uses the same song to convey something magical. The High Life ganked it and used it for the same purpose, but unfortunately the commercial world and the film world are usually two steps behind the other in terms of fashionable/hip music.
Posted by: The PA at October 14, 2005 5:59 AM
I don't get it. Perhaps its not on Canadian TV as much as it is in the US (or perhaps its only on during football), but it was completely forgetable right after I watched. Oddly enough, I watched it right beside my girlfriend who was working on something else and she didn't even glance over at my laptop to see what was up.
Posted by: Farhan at October 24, 2005 4:55 AM
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