Man Law!

Ok, so some of you will have picked up by now that my general opin­ion of ad agen­cies isn’t that high. By far the major­ity are still stuck in the 80’s, pour­ing money into point­less TVC’s that may win awards and raise a few smiles but contribute noth­ing to the client’s bottom line.

This campaign, on the other hand, is really cool. Take a bunch of well-known men — Burt Reynolds, Eddie Grif­fin, Aron Ralston (Amer­i­can hiker who ampu­tated his hand with a pocket knife), etc — and have them sit around a table debat­ing ‘Man Laws’. Topics include:

If your buddy’s girl­friend breaks up with him, how long should you wait before asking her out?
Is it time to retire the high-five?
Can a wife or girl­friend store non-beer items in the garage fridge?

The TV campaign was closely inte­grated with a website, where people could view all the ads (there are a ton of them), and also propose and debate their own Man Laws. The ads were also scat­tered through the vari­ous CGM and social network­ing sites. Search Google, YouTube, MySpace etc for ‘Man Law’ and you’ll find thou­sands of refer­ences to the Miller campaign site, and count­less home-made homages and imita­tions.

Let’s just say that the buzz surround­ing this campaign has been … ‘signif­i­cant’. This has been a huge success for Miller, and should stand as an exam­ple to agen­cies around the world of what can be achieved with a well-conceived, inte­grated (across media) campaign that embraces its audi­ence as partic­i­pants, rather than spectators.

See Jon? I finally submit­ted a post that didn’t mention porn… D’oh!