Eric Murray featured in an advert that claims beer has nutritional values.  According to the Advertising Standards Authority, this ex-rower is a hero of young people, so he had to be removed. We asked our own kids. They hadn’t heard of him. They hadn’t seen the advert either.

 

When the attack came via a complaint to the ASA, the Brewers Association bottled out. They gave a mealy-mouthed defence that it had thought about the issue at the time and concluded that the best information was that it wouldn’t break the voluntary code since Murray was now just a hirsute guy in a jacket.

 

If you know your campaign is going to push someone’s buttons, you get yourself ready to assert your position.

 

The Brewers Association should have been ready to stoke the publicity with a second phase of the campaign: featuring hundreds of hirsute men in jackets discovering the beautiful nutritional truth about beer.