9960: Miller, Time to Fire Draftfcb.

The only thing worse than the Miller Lite launch commercials from Saatchi & Saatchi are Girlfriend and Roadie from Draftfcb. It’s painful to watch an iconic brand on a death spiral accelerated by talent-deficient advertising agencies.

9913: Miller Lite Not Great, Less Thrilling.

Advertising Age reported on the new Miller Lite campaign that resurrects the old “It’s Miller Time” tagline. The introductory commercials are awful, as kickoff spots tend to be. Don’t understand why advertisers insist on launching a campaign with what must have been the mood videos the advertising agency created to initially pitch the concept to the client. Is the presumption that the public must first hear the rationale behind the big idea to fully appreciate it? Guess they have to justify the planner’s role in the process. Also don’t understand why anyone thinks a tagline that failed to resuscitate the flagship Miller brand will do the trick for the Lite franchise. MillerCoors Exec VP-Chief Marketing Officer Andy England gushed his campaign is “entirely different”—as well as “contemporary, celebratory and inclusive.” And just to prove it, the main Blacks in one spot are shown dancing. So far, the new Miller Time is circa 1990.

9880: Beer Bellies, Meet Beer Breasts.

One more item discovered while researching Miller Lite. Perhaps the most successful brand promotion in recent years—body painting beer logos on breasts—was orchestrated by a Black man running his own marketing firm. Meet Paul Gage of Boost Sales and Marketing, LLC.

9875: R.I.P. Miller Lite “Man Up” Campaign.

MultiCultClassics has never been a fan of the Miller Lite “Man Up” campaign or the lame agency behind it. So it’s great to hear the brewer is moving on to a new—albeit recycled—concept. The iconic brand has lost its way. Indeed, the latest shit from Draftfcb almost reflects how Miller Lite seems to be questioning its own manhood. The original “Great Taste…Less Filling” campaign featured ex-athletes and characters that appealed to men on more direct, honest and entertaining levels, successfully positioning lite beer as a legitimate and even masculine alternative. That is, real men drank Miller Lite. But in recent years, the work has been trying too hard to hang with the guys. The most obscene part about the “Man Up” campaign was the depiction of women. While Miller Lite, like just about all beers, has traditionally pushed female sexual stereotypes to lure men, the Draftfcb spots managed to make the insulting and condescending women appear downright unattractive. Check out the contrasting images below of Miller Lite bra-busting hotties versus “Man Up” ball-busting shrews.

9868: Filler Time.

Advertising Age reported MillerCoors is reviving the classic “Miller Time” tagline—for Miller Lite. Sounds like desperate time for the struggling beer maker. And killer time for not-ready-for-prime-time Draftfcb and its shitty “Man Up” campaign.

9783: InBev Not Indian-Friendly…?

Reuters reported on a $500 million lawsuit filed by Native Americans against beer manufacturers including Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide Inc, SAB Miller, Molson Coors Brewing Company and Pabst Brewing Company. An indirect link to the Budweiser ad posted earlier?

Indian tribe files $500 million suit against big brewers

By James B. Kelleher

(Reuters) - A Native American Indian tribe sued leading beer makers seeking $500 million in damages and accusing them of knowingly contributing to “crippling” alcoholism rates on one of the nation’s largest reservations in South Dakota.

The suit, filed by the Oglala Sioux tribe, alleges the brewers are “engaged in a common enterprise focused on assisting and participating in the illegal importation of alcohol” onto the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the sale, possession and consumption of alcohol is illegal.

The brewers sued include Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide Inc, SAB Miller, Molson Coors Brewing Company and Pabst Brewing Company, as well as four retailers in Whiteclay, Neb., and the distributors who sell to them.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in federal court in Lincoln, Neb., claims the defendants have knowingly turned Whiteclay, a small town Nebraska side of the border with South Dakota, into a major source of alcohol smuggling to the reservation. Whiteclay sells volumes of beer “far in excess of an amount that could be sold in compliance with the laws of the state of Nebraska.”

The lawsuit says Whiteclay has a population of fewer than 12 people and “no publicly accessible place to lawfully consume alcohol.” Yet each day, the four retailers in town sell more than 13,000 cans of beer.

Much of that beer ends up on the reservation, according to the lawsuit, where it has “devastating effects” on the tribe.

The suit says alcoholism is a scourge on Pine Ridge, a 2 million-acre reservation in southwestern South Dakota that is home to an estimated 40,000 people, most of them enrolled members of the Oglala Sioux tribe.

Eighty-five percent of the tribe’s members are “affected by alcoholism,” according to the suit, and one in four children born on Pine Ridge is diagnosed with either fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

The tribe is seeking $500 million in compensation to pay for “all damages it has suffered in the past and in reasonably likely to suffer in the future” as a result of the alcohol sales in Whiteclay.

SAB Miller declined to comment on the lawsuit. Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide Inc and Molson Coors Brewing Company did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is one of the poorest spots in the country, according to the U.S. Census. More than 50 percent of its residents live below the poverty line, compared with 15.1 percent nationally. Shannon County, which lies entirely within the reservation, is the third poorest county in the country, the Census says.

The unemployment rate consistently tops 80 percent, according to most estimates. Violent crime and other social ills, including a high suicide rate, are all major problems on the reservation, according to the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

A 2011 Centers for Disease Control report on the health of racial groups said that Native Americans report more binge drinking episodes per month and higher alcohol consumption per episode than other races.

A number of theories have been suggested to explain why binge drinking—defined as five drinks in a sitting for men and four for women—is such a problem among Native Americans, according to a National Institutes of Health survey of literature.

Among those are high unemployment and poverty rates on reservations, NIH said. Of the five counties in the United States with poverty rates greater than 39 percent, four are located within American Indian reservations, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

One other theory is that American Indian traditional culture may help explain the attraction of drinking. American Indians may “drink rapidly to induce an altered state of consciousness, a practice congruent with some Native American practices,” the NIH survey said.

(Reporting by James B. Kelleher; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Greg McCune)