"Miller High Life" news and stories

Can not airing a commercial bring you as much publicity as airing one? Apparently, the advertising brains down at Miller High Life think so.

High Life has garnered a lot of brand recognition positioning recent spokesman Windell Middlebrooks as a beer delivery guy who's extra picky about which establishments "deserve" to stock his precious product. As beer ads go, these rate pretty high: Middlebrooks brings a lot of energy and personality to the table and the image-building is spot on now that High Life spends more time battling with the anti-establishment antics of Pabst Blue Ribbon for marketshare than Bud's mainstream ideology.

Pushing those ideas to the next level, Miller High Life has announced plans to air a 1-second Super Bowl ad instead of paying out the $3 million dollars required for a full 30-second spot. "I don't care how big the game is, who got $3 million?!" emotes their outspoken delivery man in an online commercial. High Life would rather be "delivering more honest beer at a tasty price."

As with most Super Bowl ads, the details are being kept under wraps until the big game, but you can see "outtakes" at 1secondad.com. (They're actually kinda funny.) However, let's just hope for Miller's sake that this big-budget, anti-advertising adverting-stunt doesn't backfire on the them. (It sounds like dangerous territory!)

Tell you what, I feel a bit like a dirty corporate shill just reporting on it. Blech!

[via MSNBC]

Ah, the economy. You can blame that sucker for anything. A recent article in Advertising Age suggests that the recent economic downturn has caused a significant uptick in the sales of budget beer brands such as Miller High Life, Keystone, Busch and Natural Light.

But I'm skeptical. Sure, a suffering economy will send people looking for ways to save, but Miller High Life was boosting advertising and making sales strides well before the market crashed. And uber-underdog budget brand Pabst Blue Ribbon exploded back from obscurity over the course of nearly a decade.

Economy aside, here are two other reasons that may explain the recent surge in the budget beer sector:

Read the reasons after the jump...