DENVER, CO – In a breaking TV?campaign for regional specialty brewer Breckenridge Brewery of Colorado, Denver, four short, 15-second spots lampoon some of the bigger beer brands’ ad claims. The parody campaign, titled “Truth in Beervertising,” is by Cultivator Advertising & Design, Denver.
Each spot features the V.O. of Breckenridge brewmaster and general mgr. Todd Usry, and, facing the camera, head brewer Bob Harrington. One describes Breckenridge’s seasonal Summerbright Ale as “the perfect summer beer,” and discloses the brewer’s “proprietary”?cold test. Usry touches the bottle and pronounces, “it’s cold.” On-screen graphics anticlimactically proclaim, “If you touch it and it’s cold, then it’s cold.”
Another deadpan spot touts craft-brewed Avalanche Ale’s “gravity activated pouring” (“When you tip it, beer goes straight into your mouth. When you tip it back, the beer stops flowing.”) Elsewhere in the campaign we learn that “cold is not a flavor”; that “swirly bottlenecks make your beer… swirly?”; and that “nearly every beer on the market has at least three hops in it.”?(Lucky U?IPA, on the other hand, ?is proudly “seven-druple?hopped.”) A third-party take on mass beer ad claims can be found at The New York Ale Project.
Breckenridge’s low-budget exposé befits its limited production. Total 2011 output will top out at 40K barrels. Production costs for the ad campaign came to about $10K, with all four spots filmed in one half-day on-site at the brewery. All were directed by Adam Fowler of KDVR?Fox-31, Denver, on which network they will air exclusively, during local news, Broncos football and Sunday prime time programming. They will also be viewable online, and blog seeded.