Unquestionably, THE Best Beer Campaign In Advertising History.

Disagree? Well, you're wrong. It's that simple.

There have been many great beer ads over the decades. Here’re 11 of my favorites from the last 30 years or so.

This masterclass in trolling by Newcastle Ale is one of my favorite beer billboards ever (Ad agency: Droga5, put up in 2012 in Soho NYC).

Back to 1975 for my favorite beer billboard from a great campaign that perfectly visualized Heineken’s then UK tagline. Here’s the fun backstory on how the billboard got made. Ad agency: Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners, London

But as far as campaigns go, the below one is the standalone best. And each spot cost about 100 bucks (I exaggerate) to produce.

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All of the commercials in this Miller High Life campaign were directed by the great Errol Morris. They are goddamn perfect little works of art. These are just seven of my favorites. See all 78 of them here. SEVENTY-EIGHT. That’s a “Big Idea”, a campaign with legs out the ass. Most of them aired about 20-25 years ago.

My god, the copywriting (and v/o choice) on these spots is fucking GOLD. ALL of them ending with the emphasis on living the High Life. It’s not hard to live this High Life. But it takes a certain, well, simple manly attitude. For you lazy-asses, I’ve transcribed the spots.

“Surely that can’t be the trash-bag she wanted taken out. Perhaps she’s forgotten a man’s boot has been known to flatten garbage to the density of a fruit cake. That’s right: Looks like someone just engineered a more efficient use of his time. Now that’s living…the High Life”.

What to do to sell the “Light” High Life. The casting here is perfect, as is the way the man crams the whole deviled egg into his hungry maul.

“That last egg’s looking real good. You’ve had quite a few though. Maybe you shouldn’t. But…if you make a light choice here, maybe you will have room for just one more. See there: When you live the High Life, you can live it both ways”.

David Abbott talked a lot about your ads making a human connection. Advertising doesn’t get more “human” than these commercials. Note the direction of the spots: the glance our hero gives to the beer with lime in it. Also, this ad is a nice jab at Corona and other such pussy beers.

“Your British sailor, circa 1740, knew that citrus fruit could prevent scurvy. Now that’s gotta be the only conceivable reason a man would put a lime in his beer. Then again, how bad can scurvy be? A certain amount of risk goes hand-in-hand with living, the High Life”.

OK, some will find this spot sexist, and that’s fine because you “somes” ain’t the target audience here.

“Leather seats. Automatic transmission. Nowadays you’ll here people call this ‘a truck’. Well a man knows a station wagon when he sees one. This car will only see off-road action if the driver backs over a flower bed. If this vehicular masquerade represents the High Life to which men are called, we should trade our trousers for skirts right now”.

Sorry not sorry, France.

“It’s hard to respect the French when you have to bail em out of two big ones in one century. But we have to hand it to them on mayonnaise. Nice job, Pierre”.

Pre-ubiquitousness of cell phones. I love this anti-tech spot.

“Back in the day, the only people who were summoned in such an urgent manner were your superpowered heroes. And even then, the special call only went out if the planet Earth was on the brink of disaster. So what’s today’s crisis? ‘We’re out of eggs, dear’. There’s an arch villain named ‘technology’ on the loose. And it’s trying to steal our High Life”.

As Bart and Homer famously sang, “You don’t win friends with salad”. Unless…

“That’s the right idea chief. Potato salad…Egg salad…Macaroni salad. Otherwise, NO SALAD”.