JACK MCDONOUGH was a brilliant ad manager for Anheuser Busch. I first met him when I was to do a Michelob Dark spot for Needham and he pulled me aside and said that the spot was important and that he wanted it to be an eventual Brand Campaign not just for Dark. He said that he wanted the film to be so stylish that eventually you wouldn’t have to show the product. Ironically I had run into ‘product problems’ while I was filming Busch Beer spots in the west. The mnemonics that had been established hurt the potential of the spots and eventually led to my being asked off the brand.
Jack made the proposal to me away from the agency for some reason. I’m not sure they ever ‘got it.’
I don’t think I ever worked so hard to come up with a visualization. The song was terrific, Phil Collins’ IN THE AIR TONIGHT, but I had to avoid comparisons with MIAMI VICE.
The spot was a success winning the account for the agency to Hal Riney’s chagrin. He was also pitching the business and hated the spot saying that it had no substance, but I soldiered on and never forgot Jack’s dictum.
Time passed and Jack was leaving AB. We had never been able to break away from showing the product so I filmed a spot for Budweiser as a present. It was a story of two cops at a crime scene talking about a ‘brother- in- law’ that has made it as a stock broker. One of the cops says that it’s bullshit work and they should go have a Bud somewhere. That’s it. At the time, you could actually say that about Bud but no other.
Times have changed.
I was told that the spot was in the AB library for years but no one ever had the courage to take that idea any further.
‘LET’S GO HAVE A BUD.’