Coors Light has put together some solid ad campaigns in recent years. I will always hold a soft spot for the one a few years back which always took the general form: one guy would ask the other, “Ready for a cold one?” The other guy would respond, “…Yeah.”  as if he had just come upon the greatest philosophical revelation of his lifetime. The original guy would then pull a string magically dumping feet of snow onto the other guy. after this, he would slyly ask, “That cold enough for ya?” The guy getting the snow dumped on him would say, “It’s cold…but it’s not Coors Light.” One final throwaway joke at the end, exeunt, job well done.

More recently, there has been the “fake press conference” bit, my favorite two of which can be found here and here (the second one does an unthinkably perfect job replicating the semi-awkward laughter among reporters to be heard at so many real press conferences). With such fine ads in their past, naturally their latest work, “Protection,” must be expected to live up to that kind of standard.

Well, too bad. The ad does not make sense. It really doesn’t. It’s some guy (says he’s 26 years old) and his dad sitting around. His dad acknowledges the fact that his son must be going to all these wild parties, meeting all these wild women, etc.  He adds that they should talk about “protection.” Understandably, the son is taken aback, wondering why his father would want to discuss such things with a grown man. The father says something to the effect that his son is “never too old for your old man to give you one of these.” Now, naturally, you, the viewer, are thinking “condom.” Alas, his old man pulls out…a Coors Light, and hands it to his relieved son, who in turn thanks him. “You can never be too careful,” says the old man.

Let’s think about this for a second.  The joke is that they got you thinking condom and wound up going beer on you. The problem is that this is not a joke. the old man says, “You can never be too careful” when he gives his son the beer…but the only protection he is giving him by doing this is protection from not having beer. There is no rhyme or reason to what happens at the end of this ad, and this either makes it a completely bizarre non sequitur or their most brilliant ploy yet – an ad that you don’t even realize has been so effective, because you’re too wrapped up in thinking about what it might mean (nothing). But you definitely know it’s for Coors Light.