Hey, Remember – The Miller Lite Catfight Commercial

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https://haphazardstuff.com/miller-li...er-commercial/

Remember the controversial 2003 Miller Lite Beer Catfight Commercial, where two beautiful babes got into a brawl over whether it “Tastes great” or is “Less filling”?



It’s January 2003, millions of viewers turned on their televisions to watch their favorite football team or TV show. Commercial breaks are an accepted form of TV-watching. There’s no streaming, no one is binge-watching television programs and you can’t just ‘skip’ over an ad. Most people are using commercial breaks to run to the bathroom or grab a snack before the show or game returns.

Amongst the commercials being aired, there’s one particular one that catches male viewers gaze and will ruffle the feathers of a whole lot of people.

Two hot, sexy women are pulling each others hair and rolling around in a fountain over a debate of the values of Miller Lite Beer. One proclaims it’s the best beer because it “Tastes great!”, the other declares it’s because it’s “Less filling!”. Cue the fireworks for one of the most controversial, raciest and most talked about commercials ever.

It would become known as the ‘Miller Lite Catfight Commercial’.



Let’s first take a step back all the way to 1974 when Miller Brewing Company began a successful marketing campaign for its new ‘Light Beer’ option, Miller Lite that was “everything you always wanted in a beer. And less.”

When Miller set out to promote their new ‘light beer’, they faced a problem. A ‘light’ beer doesn’t sound very appealing compared to an old fashioned brewsky. Why not just drink a regular beer? By drinking a ‘Light Beer’ it sounded like its intent was to count calories. That was an objective that was labeled to be a bit more feminine than for the male hard drinking, beer guzzling target audience Miller wanted to get to buy it (at the time male drinkers reportedly made up 80% of its customers). What’s so great about a ‘light beer’ and how could the Miller Brewing Company make Miller Lite appealing to their large male customer market?

McCann-Erickson Worldwide a renowned advertising agency came up with an idea. A marketing campaign that would be ranked by Advertising Age Magazine as the eighth best advertising campaign in history.

The slogan “Tastes Great!…Less Filling! was born.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms prohibited the use of active professional athletes from appearing in beer advertising. However, that didn’t exclude retired athletes to be hired to shill beer. And Miller signed them up! The first Miller Lite ad that used the famous slogan was in 1981 with John Madden.



That ballooned into a whole series of humorous commercials featuring brawny and beloved ex-athletes, oddball cultural figures and celebrities trumpeting the slogan while having an argument over which side of the debate they stood on. The collection of pitchman Miller Lite used ranged from people like Madden, Bubba Smith, Mickey Spillane, Bob Uecker, Dick Butkus, Rodney Dangerfield, Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner.

The silly ads were a huge hit. The slogan of ‘Tastes Great…Less Filling’, became one of the most famous taglines in television advertising. The huge popularity of Miller Lite helped give birth to an entirely new beverage category. Miller Lite would capture more than ten percent of the entire beer market. The television commercials continued for most of the decade.

In the book, Lite Reading: the Lite Beer from Miller Commercial Scrapbook from 1984, author/journalist Frank Deford asked, “Have you ever met anyone who disliked the Lite campaign? Have you ever even met anybody who left for the bathroom when a Lite commercial came on TV?”



So, now let’s fast forward a bit. The 1980s are now coming to a close and the 1990s are just starting up. Other light beers are on the market and now fighting for customers and Miller Lite is losing its grip on its customers. Bud Light will pass Miller Lite as the number one ‘Light Beer’ in 1994.

The image of Miller Beer got something of a facelift in the 1990s. It was the era of ‘Guy Culture’ and ‘Lads Magazines’. Maxim, FHM, Loaded, Nuts, Zoo, Stuff, filled magazine stands with semi-naked female celebrities and models on their covers. Girls Gone Wild videos were being played in VCRs across the country. Baywatch featuring a buxom and wet Pamela Anderson running in slow motion on the beach was the most popular television show on the planet.



It’s no wonder why beer companies decided to follow in the same direction and really lean into the philosophy that ‘Sex Sells’.

Retired athletes and funny middle-aged celebrities packed in a bar having comical arguments suddenly seemed so antiquated. Bob Uecker and Dick Butkus were replaced as pitchmen for a younger and more seductive image. Wrinkles went out and tantalizing flesh came in. Bikini girls became the focus in the marketing for beer.

But along with the popularity with its male consumers, it would also attract controversy.

Miller Beer was certainly not the only beer using sexual imagery to market its brew. Other beer brands began to feature more and more ‘sexy girls’. It almost became a contest as to which beer company could amp up the ‘hot sexy girls’ that were used to market their cold suds.

There were ‘The Coors Light Twins’ who debuted in the spring of 2022 in a series of commercials dubbed ‘Love Songs’. The commercials became a cultural phenomenon. They were parodied on Saturday Night Live and ended up being controversial enough to give former chairman Pete Coors headaches down the road when he later ran for Senate.

Up in the Great White North of Canada, Molson Breweries featured beer ads entitled ‘The Rare Long-Haired Fox’. The premise of the marketing series of ads was meant to spoof nature documentaries that were popular to the Canadian audience.



There were many entries in the campaign, but the ‘Fox’, who was a long-haired young woman in a halter top, raised the anger of feminist groups. The company later acquiesced to the outcry. They changed the ‘Fox’ to ‘The Heavily Bundled Arctic Fox’, where now the woman was wearing a parka with a hood. She was even given a pair of gloves.

In Germany, the St. Pauli Girl Beer had been featuring costumed ladies on its label and in advertising for decades. The women got more glamorous and sexy in its ads. The tagline for the brand was “You’ll never forget your first girl”. Clearly making a connection between the brewsky and the lovely lady holding it.



Most famously, in 1991 Pabst Brewing Company, owner of Old Milwaukee Beer caught the much desired 21-35 male demographic for their beer for a short period of time by their drawing in eyeballs with ‘The Swedish Bikini Team’.

The Swedish Bikini Team was meant to be something of an absurd spoof of all the ‘sexy’ beer advertising that was permeating the market. It played up the American stereotype belief that Scandinavian women were the embodiment of the perfect female that guys dreamed about. Platinum blonde hair, big boobs filling out bikinis. Plus, the team would bring bored and thirsty men beer!

They were like real life Fembots from Austin Powers. They looked like something created in a hi-tech sensual dream lab – which is kind of where they came from. They were a concept thought up by an advertising agency. The girls were not Swedish, they were simply women who answered a casting call in L.A. to play the roles of seductive, swimsuited Swedes and given Danish/Norwegian names – Uma, Karin, Hilgar, Eva, Ulla. They were fitted with the same suits and blonde wigs and The Swedish Bikini Team was born!

And no, Sweden doesn’t have any kind of official bikini team. There’s really no ‘bikini’ sport that exists.



The ads were very popular. The Swedish Bikini Team became popular enough to do a layout in Playboy and landed on its cover. They guest starred on Married…With Children and even got referenced in The Simpsons. TV guide called the ad campaign ‘1991’s Energizer Bunny’. A poll in Ad Age found the Swedish Bikini Team was the second most-popular beer ad of all time – right behind “Great Taste/Less Filling”.

Despite their popularity, the ads for The Swedish Bikini Team were pulled after only seven months due to protests by the National Organization of Women and charges of sexual harassment by female employees of Pabst Brewing Company.



These old beer promotions look more like pin-up photos and posters that align with a Playboy layout than an advertisement for a product. While these marketing campaigns might have been short-lived and are frowned upon today, at the time these ads and ladies enjoyed fleeting pop culture notoriety.

Today, they’re nostalgically remembered by those who gazed upon these beer ads that were so popular at the time. These advertisements were ripped out of magazines and taped to walls of bedrooms, dorm rooms, lockers, garages.

Let’s face it, the adoration these promotions received from admirers probably had less to do with being a fan of the beer brand, and more to do with the sexy women in seductive poses. All these beer companies wanted to attract attention from their male drinking customers, the women were hired to do the job and get it done and they succeeded.

These are relics of an advertising era long gone. You might discover remnants of withered and yellowed images of these old beer marketing campaigns of bikini bombshells packed away in attics and basements, buried in antique stores or spot them every now and then popping up on Ebay. No longer can they be found in magazines, they’re no longer displayed in the windows of liquor stores and are not plastered on billboards anymore.

[Dude111]

Im glad ya didnt 4get da link buddy

Ah man!!

[staytuned]

Honestly, this would've been banned today if feminist saw these on either television or reading a magazine. I bet you hot steam will blow out of their ears asking, begging and pleading to be removed from the public since its considered as degrading to women due to the #metoo movement being involved.