People are good for you (and so is whisky)

harry and randa ponder the new jim beam ad campaign

Jul 07, 2023

Dear Randa

Will you watch this real quick– I was just watching some good old 4th of July cable tv and a version of this ad came on like 6 times. I am weirdly taken by it.

The advertisement, I've learned, is part of a new global campaign Jim Beam is launching with the help of the international mega agency Leo Burnett. Burnett himself was an advertising genius, known for all kinds of marketing shit including Tony the Tiger, the Marlboro Man, United's "Fly the Friendly Skies", and Allstate's "Good Hands” (per Wikipedia).

Beam's new slogan is “People are Good for you”

In the stupid corporate gibberish press release Leo Burnett put out, LB’s Chief Creative Officer tagged the release saying “We’re very proud to put work into the world that’s genuinely optimistic and uplifting.”

Am I crazy to be like….yes!

I really like this ad. ‘People Are Good For You’ connects with me. That is why I drink alcohol when I drink alcohol. Jim Beams's old slogan was “make history”, Miller's light is “great taste, less filling”, and Modelos is “brewed for those with a fighting spirit’. Those all fall somewhere between mid and sinister. But more importantly, I had to google them because I had no idea what they were.

We’re long-time supporters of the People Are Good For You movement more broadly, but what do you think about it being used (or weaponized) to sell beer? Do you buy my excitement about this? Or does it read as slimy to you? Also do you even care? I’m still deciding if I even care about this…but I weirdly think I might be landing on the side of…actually caring….

Happy birthday

pps

Happy 12th nmjc. We’ve been doing this for 3 months! wow! If you’ve enjoyed this lil project, maybe share it with a friend so Randa and I can become CIA-backed Thought Leaders….

Share nmjc

Thank you… i found this snippet in a book of poetry that felt pertinent

Re: Jim Beam - you know I’m a fan of recreational singing and general communing so I like the vibe of the ad. I don’t love that it’s being used to sell whiskey. But I guess companies and brands can get people to do stuff, so if Jim Beam incepts people into being interested in gathering at bars and singing together then maybe that’s good? Who’s to say that the surgeon general didn’t put Leo up to this?

Though I have tried to commit myself to a strong opinion about how the entire world’s economy should work, I have never succeeded. I actually think it’s kind of crazy when people claim to know exactly how the world should work but that’s a convo for another time. If Jim Beam has to exist and has to create advertisements to get customers, I’m pretty happy with this one.

also i feel like a lot of alcohol ads used to be more sexualized? like that disaronno on the rocks stuff (fwiw i have never even seen disaronno in my life). maybe this ad represents the new sexlessness of our culture…

the angel on my shoulder is like - drinking is bad for you and should only be done in moderation and alcohol companies shouldn’t imply that drinking is necessary for socializing. the devil is like - alcohol is fun so who cares.

why are you excited about it?

Sorry Randa…and to all our readers…but im going David Foster Wallace Mode

DFW had all these problems with irony, and wrote about them in this crazy 1993 essay called “E unibus pluram: television and U.S. fiction.”

I would say I understand about 1/4th of what he’s talking about in this essay. But the thing that I have always connected to is his analysis of advertisements.

Flexer Walface writes:

Classic television commercials were all about the group. They took the vulnerability of Joe Briefcase, sitting there, watching, lonely, and capitalized on it by linking purchase of a given product with Joe B.'s inclusion in some attractive community. This is why those of us over twenty-one can remember all those interchangeable old commercials featuring groups of pretty people in some ecstatic context having just way more fun than anybody has a license to have, and all united as Happy Group by the conspicuous fact that they're holding a certain bottle of pop or brand of snack - and the blatant appeal here is that the relevant product can help Joe Briefcase belong. "We're the Pepsi Generation...."

I know it’s long but just read it.

He continues:

“but the relevant datum is that a lot of the most effective TV commercials now make their appeal to the lone viewer in a terribly different way. Products are now most often pitched as helping the viewer "express himself," assert his individuality, "stand out from the crowd." The first instance I ever saw was a perfume vividly billed in the early eighties as reacting specially with each woman's "unique body chemistry" and creating "her own individual scent,"

He’s bang on the money here…and it’s hard not to see this new Jim Beam ad as a RETURN to the so-called “classic commercial.” Not only that… it’s a return with GUSTO. The implicit becomes explicit, it’s literally a bar full of a “happy group”.

And to your point, if we HAVE to have a giant industry built around mind controlling us to buy things, I prefer this new direction. It seems healthier, and less exhausting.

When I was 20 I loved the idea of being “the most interesting man in the world” but now that sounds exhausting and unrelenting. Plus I had no idea how totally loserific and uncool being the most interesting man in the world would become. (Think posting 35 ‘Cool NYC Thrift Haul’ videos on tik tok every month.) I’d much rather sing in a bar with some strangers.

Anyway. I like the ad, even though it is a bit corny. and you know what. I like David Foster Wallace!!