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Top 3 stupid bloke ads of the week

Being surrounded in Hong Kong by rather earnest ads for health supplements and tech products, I’ve started to miss the tongue-in-cheek humour that you see elsewhere. I thought I’d redress the balance by posting three new ads from around the world that are unashamedly aimed at blokes. Yes, they may make men look like one-dimensional idiots, but they’re still more memorable than a million FMCG product demos.

Australia has its fair share of awful ads (i.e. pretty much anything from Harvey Norman), but one area it consistently excels is beer advertising. My favourite of the week is BMF’s spot for Tap King. It combines what seems like quite a cool new gadget with Lionel Ritchie crooning in a fridge. And they’ve even managed to make the instructional video reasonably amusing.

Next up is one for Cerveza Andes in Argentina, which asks why the most devastating hurricanes always seem to be named after women:

The final one for Stowford Press Cider feels a bit derivative, but it’s still better than the terrible Carlsberg ads that aired recently in the UK. And when you consider it’s the brand’s first ever national TV ad, it isn’t a bad effort:

Letting someone else choose for you

Instead of another pair of socks for my birthday, this year my lovely wife gave me a subscription to something called Beer Cartel.

It’s a simple formula, you pay them money, they send you a mystery case of different beers each month that someone – who presumably knows more about beer than me – has chosen. No need to fill in preferences, connect with Facebook or deliberate any further.

You get the odd dud every once in a while, but it’s a great way of discovering some lovely drops you’d probably overlook otherwise. This month I got a deliciously warming alcoholic ginger beer from James Squire called Ginger Chops, a Sam Adams Noble Pils and a couple of new Aussie lagers called Arvo.

In a world obsessed with infinite choice, it’s easy to forget that sometimes it’s more fun to just let someone else choose for you. Check it out at beercartel.com.au

Tooheys Extra Dry and the mystery of the house party six pack

The new Tooheys Extra Dry ad attempts to answer a question that has nagged anyone who’s ever turned up at a house party with a six pack of beers: where exactly do they end up once you stick them in the ice bath?

The ad gets top marks for tapping into a universal truth about house parties, but sadly I’m not sure it tells the real story. Any sane person taking Tooheys to a house party has one thing on their mind – upcycling them into something with a bit of flavour.