Miller Light's "Catfight" ad

The late, great Bill Hicks wasn't just a comedian, he was a prophet. Hicks once described his ultimate advertisement as a camera slowly zooming out, revealing a naked, masturbating woman, underlined by the caption, "Drink Coke." This apparently provided the inspiration for Miller Lite's latest ad campaign, which airs mostly during football games.

Miller Lite, No. 3 and sinking further behind Bud Light and Coors Light in the light-beer market, has produced an ad so over-the-top smutty, it's likely to get in the Friday night rotation on Cinemax. If Miller Lite gets any more desperate to get people to buy its beer, its next series of ads will feature actual penetration.

In the ad, two busty, comely dames are seated at an outdoor lunch table when they begin to argue in the style of the old 1970s "Tastes Great-Less Filling" campaign. The argument leads to a knock-down brawl in which the busty, comely dames dive into a reflecting pool, tearing each other's clothes off, with the camera providing enough underwear and bra shots to launch 1,000 lingerie fetish sites. The fight turns out to be the imagination of two guys, as the scene shifts to a corner bar in which one guy says, "Yeah, who wouldn't want to see an ad like that!" For the punchline, the camera shows the men's obviously pissed-off girlfriends — apparently not them! Ha ha!

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After the short product pitch — not about the taste of the beer, but about how Miller Lite makes any story better (sure, when you're drunk, anything sounds good) — the scene returns to the girlfight, this time in a mud pit. Who knew your finer outdoor lunch gardens had mud pits? The ad stops there, except for when it airs late at night, in which the denouement is one busty, comely dame saying to the other, "Do you want to make out?" (Well, it's supposed to be only in late nights, but that version slipped through during one of the NFL's daytime divisional playoff games.) Geez, you never saw shirtless, wet, muddy, bisexual wrestling when Bob Uecker was doing the ads.

Using sex to sell beer hardly comes as news — remember Old Milwaukee's "Swedish Bikini Team"? That ad was deemed so offensive, Stroh's own female employees sued to stop its airing. But that was in the early 1990s, right after the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearing showdown. Now this is Maxim's world, baby, and Miller Lite is going to show as much skin as it can get away with.

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The ad, titled Catfight (of course), is just the start of a year-long campaign of boobie ads. Miller Lite executives say there'll be boobies in ads running in Maxim, a boobies calendar in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, etc., etc. It's supposed to draw attention to, believe it or not, Miller Lite's new logo, which — amazingly — is not shaped like the naked silhouettes you see on semi-truck trailer mud flaps.

"We are unveiling a new look and attitude for Miller Lite with a year-long commitment to creating memorable and exciting — often unexpected — experiences for consumers to share with this great beer," said Bob Mikulay, Miller's executive vice president of marketing, in an interview with the Milwaukee Business Journal. So does that mean he'll guarantee that two hot chicks will underwear-wrestle and do the lesbian liplock every time you drink Lite? If that's so, you won't be able to keep any in stock!

However, Miller Lite likely won't be able to make that guarantee, so it again has made a fundamental error in its advertising — it doesn't tell you the stuff is any good. No matter how you advertise it, no matter how many jiggling breasts and late-night, 900-number-ad-style come-ons you air, the ads will be ineffective in actually selling the product if you don't give a tangible reason to consume it.

Contrast with the ads for the No. 1 light beer, Bud Light. In every ad, no matter what the scenario, people are doing crazy things because the beer tastes so damn spiffy. Bud Light, through a million ads every football game, pounds it in your head: "Our beer is good... our beer is good... our beer is good... would you get some damn beer already?"

You'd think that Miller Lite would have learned that lesson during its disastrous "Dick" campaign in the 1990s, in which some 1970s-looking dork/advertising genius allegedly was the brains behind Lite ads featuring hip, ironic statements like evil beavers and a fat, dancing guy in a T-shirt. The campaign didn't do dick for Lite's sales, which during this time sank below Coors Light's. (By the way, Coors Light's advertising strategy is unashamed as well — twentysomethings partying like hell and getting bombed on their product. Under FCC rules, you can't show anyone drinking a beer, but it's permissible to show Kid Rock spraying a crowd with one.)

Maybe the Miller Lite folks long ago gave up the idea on selling the beer based on taste. However, when Hicks did his routines about venal ad people, his point was that they were capable of anything in the pursuit of selling a product. He didn't say the product would actually sell.