Last year, brewer Goose Island pitched the marketing team at AB InBev, its parent company, for a 2019 Super Bowl spot. The answer was a resounding “maybe,”
Although the two making the pitch, Goose Island president Todd Ashmann and cofounder Greg Hall, weren’t successful in their efforts, they did set the stage for a specialist to come in and help them out with their ad efforts.
Goose Island brought in a so-called ‘marketing guru,’ Duane Hackett (played by Saturday Night Live’s Alex Moffat), who claimed to have the magic touch when it comes to upgrading a beloved-yet-scrappy brand into a buzzworthy household name to help sell Goose’s new beer, Next Coast IPA.
The series of digital spots by Crispin Porter Bogusky— which star real Goose Island employees such as Ahsmann and Hall — show Hackett pushing the brand to try out time-tested (but ridiculously irrelevant) tropes and gimmicks of past Super Bowl advertising. One has a man in cut-off shorts trying to be sexy while dealing with a beer vending machine (a la Cindy Crawford’s Pepsi ad), while another tries to come up with catch phrases for the craft brew, like “Finger lickin’ beer” and “It’s the drinkiest.” Yet another mimics Apple’s iconic ‘1984’ ad and falls flatter than a spent keg.
See the spots by clicking on the Creative Works box below.