You may remember Robbie Wenger. He won the grand prize at Wrath of Cannes — yeah, that was him licking the statue — for Virtual Drinking Buddy, a subsite he created for The Knot.
The theme behind Virtual Drinking Buddy was “never be alone again,” and toward that end it provided a classy old boozehound that drinks at your side and occasionally even insults you — just like a real friend.
Amalgamated/NYC totally ripped the idea for Mike’s Hard Lemonade. This spot depicts an excited Mike’s employee showing off his latest creation, a lame and repetitive “Mike’s Hard Lemonade virtual drinking buddy,” to two co-workers at the factory. The watchers get up, shut off the laptop, and walk off, making way for the tagline: “In a world gone soft, someone’s got to be hard.”
The ad trashes the “virtual drinking buddy,” even makes the idea look laughably bad, but still positions it as the invention of a Mike’s Hard Lemonade employee. And what are the odds Amalgamated didn’t see virtualdrinkingbuddy.com before composing the spot?
The big question is, did Amalgamated deviate from the original concept just enough to avoid censure?
