The Fairest Night: Andes beer evens up the dating game by taking all the hot men off the street!

The Background

As part of our series that highlights work that others may not have spotted the first time around, I am focusing on a campaign from Andes beer, entitled the “Fairest Night Of All”.

There is a caveat to this. In a world where Coors is being compared to a bra-off moment, this ad looks like an anachronism.

And it’s riddled with issues when you start thinking about it too hard.

Is Andes to be consumed only by mingers? Are all physically attractive men brainless idiots? Are women so eager to pull that if you take all the hot guys away they’ll shag the nearest man regardless, out of sheer desperation? So many issues.

But consumers don’t think that hard about ads, do they? So this just leaves a gentle smile and a warm feeling about Andes.

The Big Idea

A likely lovelorn ad creative, frustrated that he wasn’t getting much attention on the dancefloor, observed that there are too many hot guys and that they get all the girls during the big nights out in major Spanish cities.

So – he reasoned when thinking about a response to a brief from Andes beer – let’s take them out of the game to give the rest of us a chance to get the girl.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what he did.

As a result, Andes beer was convinced to make the “Fairest Night of All”.

Take the Love Island-alikes out of the game for a night and that tips the playing field very firmly to the advantage of the rest of the male population and they can get out there and have a really good time…

What They Did

Apparently, they managed to get 350 men (who resemble something between Adonis and Prometheus of Greek legend) to a casting call for a beer ad.

Once there, these Herculean figures of manhood were convinced to stay for hours… and hours … and hours. Making idiots of themselves over an ever-longer period of time.

Meanwhile, with all of these hotties off the street and out of the clubs, the rest of the city’s male population were left to hit the bars, grab some bottles of Andes and pull like they’d never pulled before.

The Review

Look, I know this is riddled with issues.

But it has a certain Latin sense of humour. It also has the most wonderful of all insights – that the mating game is skewed towards a relative minority in male society who always seem to get the girls.

And it is stunningly shot.

It’s clearly a stunt. It didn’t really happen. It’s a sham.

But the filming, the script and the acting all makes for a cracking watch. It’s one of the very few ads in the world that I’d cheerfully watch a couple of times over. And where pretty much everyone I’ve shown it to has said “send me the link, there’re a couple of people I want to share that with”.

And that doesn’t happen all that often, now does it?

In Hindsight

Has this piece of work aged well? No, most assuredly not.

But then we don’t exist to make work that always stands the test of time.

Sometimes, it’s about capturing an insight at a point in time and making work that brings that insight to life with wit, humour and a certain joie de vivre.

This certainly does that.