Beer ads in New Zealand confuse me especially the Lion Red and Tui ones. It's almost like they're saying - 'buy our beer if you're a dickhead'. Or am I reading them all wrong?
 | There’s a series of ads for a South Island beer called Speights. Each features two archetypal 'Southern Men' with their long waxed jackets, rancher hats and thousand yard stares. In the first the younger shows a photo of a pretty young blonde. Her father is rich, with a boat and a private box at Eden Park. |
Unfortunately she can’t be The One as she doesn’t drink Speights. In the next ad they spend the night together at the local Speights factory after ‘accidentally’ being locked in on a beer tour. In the current ad the young Southern Man gets chatted up by a curvy blonde who offers him two tickets to the annual Deer Stalkers Ball [the highlight of the social calendar]. Southern Man accepts, takes both tickets, and then gives the second to his grizzled old mate. They even have a billboard with the younger asking what he thinks about the Blues [an Auckland rugby team] to which his mate replies - 'I'm a country and western man myself'. They should just come out and change their slogan to ‘Speights – Gay Pride of the South since 1876’.
