Okay but you can’t reblog this without the “sequel” and an explanation.
The ad above, created by agency DDB Chicago, ran from 1999 to 2002. It is objectively a terrific ad, as it led to a spike in sales of Budweiser beer in the U.S. of nearly 9%, after a long stretch of flat sales for the company (in fact, an increase in sales was seen in several beer brands, and that has been directly attributed to coattails: i.e. people remembered that the ad was for beer, and had made positive associations between it and beer, but forgot which brand of beer was being advertised). It is also subjectively terrific; it won the Cannes Grand Prix for best commercial at the Cannes Advertising Awards, and it won the Grand Clio Award (it was inducted into the CLIO Hall of Fame in 2006). Plus, it was immensely infectious, which is what every advertiser dreams of; “whassuuuuuuuup” was everywhere for a few years. Admit it; if you were aware of this commercial, you totally “Whassuuuuuuup”-ed and “True. True”-ed your friends over the phone (and in person) at multiple opportunities.
So, consider: this ad first airs in 1999. Bill Clinton is the president. The economy is booming, and has been for most of his time in office. To say the U.S. wasn’t “at war” would be disingenuous at best (we sure do like to drop bombs), but the U.S. was not engaged in an active, ongoing hot war against another nation with boots on the ground.
In 2001, George W. Bush took office. You all know what happened later that year. The ad stopped running in 2002. The Bush Administration manufactured wars (two hot, simultaneous wars), manufactured nationwide fear (a new governmental department named Homeland Security was in charge of this; go look up the “Homeland Security Advisory System” if you didn’t live through those years, or if you were too young to understand), and manufactured white millionaires and billionaires on the backs of the middle class and the poor, especially poor people of color. They also manufactured the economic collapse of 2008 and ensuing double-digit unemployment spike, thanks to their lack of regulation allowing (read: encouraging) the sub-prime mortgage crisis. They committed multiple acts of negligent homicide of people of color in the unbelievable lack of anything resembling action in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The DEA began restricting or simply killing access to serious painkillers under the guise of “preventing addiction.” (This paragraph doesn’t even scratch the surface of the harm the Bush Administration did to our country, but it’s the info that’s relevant to this post.)
People of color disproportionately made up the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (not by percent of the military, but by percent of enlisted PoC vs percent of PoC in the total American population); people of color were what we were told to fear (and the Republicans sure did like to raise the terror alert level whenever they needed compliance, unswerving loyalty, or a distraction); people of color were more likely than white people to lose their homes when the “housing bubble” burst thanks to the predatory lending schemes allowable due to sub-prime mortgages (again as a percent of total population of PoC vs. white). People of color were left to drown in New Orleans and elsewhere after Katrina. People of color were the “suspected” drug abusers of the restricted medications, as well as the “suspected” dealers in the “illegal painkiller street sales.”
SO.
The interesting part of the story regarding the ad starts here: neither Budweiser nor the ad agency that produced the ad owned the rights to the concept (four friends on the phone to one another repeating the elongated “whassup” over and over, and saying “True. True,” in response to statements). This is because the ad was based on a short film, True, which was directed by Charles Stone III (who also directed the movie Drumline, as well as a number of music videos). Stone is the guy who answers the phone right at the beginning of the video. DDB leased the rights from him for five years from 1999.
In 2008, a “sequel” appeared on YouTube, seemingly out of nowhere. It is two minutes long, but the purpose of the video is unknown until a minute and a half have elapsed.
Since Charles Stone III owned the rights to the visuals and the (now-omnipresent) catch-phrase, he used the instantly recognizable concept in order to share his opinions about what had happened to America since the ad premiered. He called up the original actors. He called the original Director of Photography. They all agreed to do it – and do it for free.
Here it is. Trigger warnings in the tags. Please vote in the mid-term elections next year.
