Special Group launches first campaign for Carlton Dry since joining CUB’s agency roster
After a competitive pitch in December 2017, Special Group has joined the CUB roster as agency of record for Carlton Dry. The new brand campaign ‘Be Like The Beer’ is the first CUB work from Special Group and launches this week in multiple channels, including TV, cinema, social and digital.
Says Cade Heyde, managing director and partner, Special Group: “We are incredibly proud to have earned a place on CUB’s roster and to work with such an iconic family of brands. This is a business that’s been responsible for some of Australia’s best advertising, and we only hope to add to that already impressive legacy.”
Says Hayden Turner, senior marketing manager, Carlton Dry: “When we talk to our consumers they tell us that Carlton Dry is the most easy drinking beer on the market, super refreshing with an uncomplicated taste profile and that’s why they love it. The
Special Group have uncovered the magic that sits behind this truth and we are very excited to see it hit the market.”
The new Carlton Dry campaign strategically both helps position Carlton Dry as a unisex beer option, and also introduces the notion of – ‘uncomplicated’ – as a descriptor of easy drinking, smooth lagers. It reveals to Aussie drinkers that in a world overrun with complications, we could do a bit more with being like Carlton Dry – an easy drinking, uncomplicated beer.
Says Julian Schreiber, ECD and partner, Special Group: “Carlton Dry has always strived
to be an uncomplicated beer for a complicated world. So it made sense to let the beer itself be the voice of reason and point out what’s happening all around us. If you think about it beers have probably seen it all.”
Says Tom Martin ECD and partner, Special Group: “‘Be like the Beer’ came from the simple insight that being uncomplicated like the taste of Carlton Dry is something to actually aspire to. It immediately positioned Dry as the kind of beer we’d want more of as we find ourselves overwhelmed by things that used to be no-brainers.”
The films personify the beer as a full-sized guy and girl, each pointing out how even some basic things in life have become unnecessarily complicated. Our human beers notice how the world is going a bit wrong in a light hearted way, encouraging the audience to ‘Be uncomplicated. Be Like The Beer’. From cryptic signs, to dip flavours
and even beer itself – there’s proof everywhere you look that things would just be better for us if they were less complicated like Carlton Dry.
The campaign launches this week.
Creative Agency: Special Group
CEO, Partner: Lindsey Evans
Managing Director, Partner: Cade Heyde
Planning Partner: Dave Hartmann
Executive Creative Directors, Partners: Tom Martin, Julian Schreiber
Creative Directors: Jack Nunn and Nils Eberhardt
Creatives: Jack Nunn, Nils Eberhardt, Harry Stanford, Nick Plomp
Business Lead: Tori Magill
Executive Producer: Paul Johnston
Brand Director for Contemporary beers: Brian Phan
VP Marketing APAC South: Richard Oppy
Carlton Dry Senior Marketing Manager: Hayden Turner
Carlton Dry Brand Manager: Bianca Robortaccio
Production Company: Revolver/Will O’Rourke
Director: Trevor Clarence
Managing Director/Executive Producer: Michael Ritchie
Executive Producer: Pip Smart
Producer: Serena Paull
Director of Photography: Russell Boyd
Editor: Stuart Morley
Post Production: Blockhead
Casting: Danny Long Casting
Audio: Rumble Studios
Media agency: PHD
62 Comments
This is the worst that ad any client has ever written in the history of clients writing ads.
Probably the worst idea for 2018, but feel your pain as beer advertising has never been tougher to make.
wow this world class terrible
…..cos this shit stinks!!!
So much wrong with this.
Let’s ignore the horrid execution and start with the schoolboy error of telling punters what to do .
‘Be uncomplicated’
‘Be more like beer’
Um, how about you fuck right off Carlton Dry?
Don’t PR your turkeys.
Let’s just remind our clients where we’ve come from and what they now make us create. I don’t blame Special G…especially as the talent: in particular the ECDs, have come from making some of the best ads in the country (in a previous life)
https://youtu.be/CG3gQ_I1L3E
What a shame our beer ads have become.
Hahahahaha! He’s a bottle of beer! Congratulations to all involved.
Makes me want to drink anything but Carlton Dry,
Such a strangely complicated premise described in an uncomfortably awkward and preachy way. You should be like the beer? At least they don’t suggest that you need to like the beer, that would be a bridge too far.
Hi. I’m a charmless ad campaign. And I can’t help but wonder – what absolute donkey thought taking a swipe at trans people would pass as a joke in 2018?
Also, isn’t foreign food funny?
It’s worth noting, these ECD’s didn’t do that ad you referenced.
This is wet wet wet.
The strategy is iffy, the scripts are whiffy.
CUB…you need a strong agency not this weak effort.
Yup, despite being incredibly talented, the one thing these boys could never do was write a good beer ad.
He is not a dude anyone should put in their mouth.
If only we could bottle the bitterness of you lot..
Wow, this is bizarre.
Special Group’s work is usually great. What a shame.
This is what happens when CUB knows craft beers are stealing share, but doesn’t have a plan as to what to do about it: It becomes a problem for advertising to solve.
The result is an embarrassment for all concerned.
Come on, it’s rare you get something as bad as this show it’s face on the blog.
There’s plenty of bad advertising on here of course.
But this is from a decent agency, with lots of people’s names attached, there’s solid budget behind it and yet it is an absolute horror show. A certified donkey.
The more bitterness this gets the better.
Wow! He’s a bottle of beer! Makes me really want to drink this guy.
This work says a lot about an agency and their creative ambition. It’s genuinly the worst piece of comms I’ve seen this year, yet the agency and client PR it as something they’re proud of. People on major salaries with great responsibility have a duty to prevent work like this ever being made and worse promoted as work their agency is happy to make.
Embarrassing for the industry.
“When we talk to our consumers they tell us that Carlton Dry is the most easy drinking beer on the market, super refreshing with an uncomplicated taste profile…”.
If the creatives and ECD’s in particular couldn’t see this was going to be a stinker, then they’re all a bunch of charlatans. This would have to be one of the worst campaigns to come out this year. It’s dire!
Beats slapping on some green screen mouth tho the bottles
I liked the old CD ads better.
Who signed off this smashed crab of an ad?
Seriously.
Client service should have shut it down.
Strategy seems completely absent.
And it feels like creative were either completely cooked or had a gun to their head.
Gotta hand it to production though, no idea how they got a five-foot woman in a two-foot esky.
What a time to be alive.
Doesn’t build a better industry.
Does anyone truly believe that bland, mainstream beers are complicated?
Nor does crap work like this
Angry people have a beer and chill…
Be constructive. Don’t be a dickhead. Be like the beer.
I really needed a good laugh. This certainly provided them. God they are truly awful.
However, i’ll go out on a limb here and say this was probably not the fault of Special Group. No one at CUB these days would know a good idea if their lives depended on it. They are all more concerned with what the next person up the food chain thinks, and so blunt any interesting creativity before it has a chance to develop. Genuinely the worst, least talented clients in the business.
hey Special group how about giving some other suppliers a crack?
Clems did Underthink It for Calton Dry last year, did they not? Which was a much better version of this. Why would you PR something that is LITERALLY a shitty execution of the same idea?
From my own experiences the past few years, clients are getting far more difficult getting a decent idea over the line – WE ALL KNOW THAT – because they’re all Gen Y’s who think they know everything and are all batting above their career averages in roles they don’t have the experiences to be in, therefore, are shit scared of making a wrong decision, because they dont know anything, and the spill on effect is an increasingly bland benchmark of work in an increasingly frustrating industry.
This reeks to me of a client wanting to do the ‘weird, kooky’ beer ad without actually doing anything new. The FX are great and so is the production but everything else … they literally did Underthink It.
Terrible stuff from Special and CUB. But I am sure we have all been in similar situations. When we “take clients on the journey” through strategy territory/tissue sessions and creative territory/tissue sessions it takes about three weeks for clients to see a script. By then they have approved and bought into some territory that seemed interesting at the time, so it is hard for client or agency to back away from it when they see it has come to life through work like this. Let’s kill all territory/tissue sessions and get to the thinking and work as quickly as possible.
Love how the creatives felt the need to explain the idea in the press release.
Surely their judgement isn’t this poor?
Did someone make them do it?
There’s a lot of hate on this post.
And I for one would like to add to it.
Everyone on the credits list had a chance to stop this but you didn’t. Shame.
This is a complete fiasco from strategy to dispatch.
It is in every conceivable way a forsaken campaign and will not only drag down sales, it takes with it a piece of our cultural capital.
This is not just a missed opportunity. It is damaging to our profession.
Hang your heads and for God’s sake, make the next one better.
The only ones smiling at this are Nick Garret and James McGrath.
Disgusting.
Are you guys serious… !?! How can there be so much hatred?
It’s just advertising for $&@“ sake.
I love everything about this comment, except the opening line. Its incredible, that somehow, you feel compelled to belittle your peers in order to validate what could have been a good point of view.
Is totally a millineal. #hangyourheads
These comments are crazy. I get the feeling a lot of them come from the same few sad commentators.
I reckon it’s funny. It’s got that quirky US style humour. It’s just a shame the dialogue is so dull.
The most uncomplicated advert I have ever seen. Said no one ever.
This is a load of old toss.
Looks like it was made in the nineties.
Why try and recreate the Tooheys tongue in the bathtub?. Move on people. Its 2018 ya’ll.
And BTW, don’t @ me for this comment.
Do you think the shit beer might be so shit that it creates so much desperation that it creates shit advertising?
I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of good beer ads lately in Oz. You?
I think TSG did something different creatively and it made me stop and think. It was a bit more abstract and less boofy. So points for that.
But it’s just a shit product and you literally cannot change that without giving punters some sort of mind altering surgery. Or giving it away nearly free.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
(And all you legends need to pipe down and head back to the peanut gallery.)
This is the most uncomplicated advert I have ever seen. Said no one ever.
This is a load of old toss. And it’s tired.
Was it made in the nineties?
Did you honestly just try and recreate the Tooheys tongue in the bathtub?. Move on people.
Its 2018 ya’ll.
And BTW, don’t @ me for this comment.
I’m already asleep.
If they turned these creatives into a beer it would be Carlton zero
Taiika Watiti used to do your ads CUB?
You were too busy chasing trends to realize you were ahead of them via Clem’s work back in the day (5-8 years ago). People used to talk about your ads while drinking beer.
You’ve not only shat the bed, you’ve been laying in it for so long you now don’t know what shit smells like. It smells like this.
So, if you told a bunch of blue-collared workers that the guys that came up with these ads got collectively paid about 300k based on the time they put against the job. You’d then tell them that the best part is the client got charged double that. They’d roar with laughter and say “We could think up a better ad than that!”
Yes. Yes, you could.
Unfortunately, we are all forced to create appalling work from time to time. And I’m ashamed to say that I for one have produced more than my fair share.
But here’s the thing: none of us are forced to PR to our indiscretions..
Mine are buried in the deepest darkest corners of the internet.
https://youtu.be/TdBS5mWToUc
@How some creative judgement
Actually you ARE forced to PR your work (when you work at an agency). It happens constantly that agencies end up PRing work they’d rather not. It’s only client that has the power to decide against PRing work and they never want to not PR something they’ve spent lots of money on. .Even if the agency is worried about the result they can’t tun around and say ‘actually we don’t think this is our best work’ – the client aren’t going to be too happy about that.
lol
Both big breweries are clearly caught up in the last few years thinking they should be rational rather than emotional or entertaining, unlike 10 -15 years ago, when they both did some great world class work the majority of people loved… this execution in particular is like ‘hey lets get the product to literally tell us the strategy’.
The problem is, this isn’t just advertising. It’s very, very bad advertising. They will be spending money on media, that will accelerate the decline of the brand, not grow it.
The Carlton Dry advertising over the years has been exceptional and also effective. It was a beer that had no right to earn the share it did, but it won because Clems managed create work that was connected to culture.
This work is shallow, and lacking any kind of true insight. I would bet my left nut that this damages the brand, but I’m sure Special and the marketing team on this will no longer be there to clean it up when CUB realise.
These clients are just the worst. The utter worst. They all think they’re creatives, refuse to listen to the specialists they hire to do their job and at the end of the day, they only care about their bonuses.
When you work for people like that, this is the sort of work you get forced into making.
Truth is – if these were directed by someone awesome, and the dialogue was sparkling and wieden-esque they wouldn’t have sucked as much. Not saying they’d be lining up for lions – but they wouldn’t be as slaughtered as they are here.
If I had to guess I’d say the dialogue suffered the excrutiating death of a thousand cuts and when it came to picking the director the client had a bit of a champagne taste on an… ahem… beer budget.
This is the kind of work that happens when planners and clients run the creative department.
We have changed how we work, become all ‘collaborative’ and ended up with bag handlers as the true creative directors and created an industry nobody truly creative would want to join.
It is the worst possible time to be in advertising and you only need to look at the talent-drain happening to the US to see it. People would literally rather live under Trump than churn out the crap clients, suits and planners call advertising in Australia.
It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s an entire generation of spineless creative directors (sorry, ECD / CCO) too scared to say no to anyone and protect the creative product.
We are all to blame here. Look at the work your agency is doing. Is it better than this?
Probs not, hey.
This truly is “Special”. Well done to The Special Group and the 2 interns they had working on this.
I hate your average ass comment just as much as this average ass ad.
Glad I got that out of my system.
High on bitterness.
Comments on the “uncomplicated” ads have been disabled. Well, at least it’s good to know that someone is checking their YT account from time to time and seeing the feedback on this abomination.
Weak sauce. Piss poor creative effort, but to be fair, the beer taste like piss also.