Welcome back to A Creative Review with James Cooper. Today Coop dissects a new campaign featuring go-to budget brew, Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Fine Art & Cheap Suds

This PBR billboard is a conundrum indeed. What do you do for a brand that has - almost unwittingly - been hijacked by Williamsburg hipsters? As a marketer do you shrug your shoulders, thank the lucky stars and Vice magazine that the kids are back buying your beer, and go on your merry way? Or do you try to engage the hipster audience? With this billboard it’s clearly the latter. 

Photo credit: ADstruc

On the creative execution alone, I would have advised them not to bother. It’s a bit of a mess frankly. The Warhol style screen print is so played out. Campbell’s just launched a range of soup cans that have the original Warhol design on them, and you can sort of see why that makes sense, as they were the original inspiration - but here it just feels lazy and uninspired. 

It’s a shame too, because the idea with pbrart.com - again, what a clumsy url! - is to inspire people to ‘drink and draw’. I actually quite like that as a line and idea. It has some balls to it. But sadly, the site is pretty flat and the drawings that users have uploaded weak. Some might say just like the beer.

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That’s all folks! Want to get involved? Send us the best or worst billboards you’ve seen and we’ll choose one every week. Just email coop@adstruc.com.