Foster’s series of good call ads are great little comedy sketches in their own right. With the stars of the show, fictional characters Brad and Dan, who sit in their Heath Robinson shack on a sizzling hot beach in Oz, you get placed right in the moment. You can feel the heat rising off the beach and imagine the satisfaction that the guys are getting drinking their ice cold tubes of the amber nectar while they sit in the shade.
That’s the thing that draws you into this series of ads in a way that some other ads just miss the mark. You know how the guys feel, sitting there sheltering from the blazing sun, and you can identify with what makes them tick. These two guys represent what so many people want – a life of ease and indolence in the hot summer sun. They’re bound to be popular with the British viewers the ads are aimed at, who will look out of the window to see overcast or cloudy grey skies 90 per cent of the time.
The Foster’s ads give us Brits a little taste of how sweet life could be – if only we lived on the other side of the world! Of course, we know that life’s not like that, and that if it was it would be pretty shallow, but for escapism purposes, the lazy idyll of Brad and Dan’s lives is perfect!
We love to watch the guys fixing ignorant British boys’ dilemmas too. They give out some cracking advice while they’re enjoying their beer. Don’t tell your girlfriend how bad her hair cut is, because you’d hurt her feelings and “telling lies is what separates us from the animals!” Enjoy the fact that you’ve got a hairy back – it proves how much of a real man you are. If you’re worried about your girlfriend turning into her mother, don’t be. That time is a long way off and you’ll have other concerns by the time it actually happens – like how scotch eggs are made.
Foster’s ad campaign is fun and light, and that’s what makes it work so well. You can watch any of the Brad and Dan ads at fosters.co.uk.