My Bud Light billboard was changed last week. It now says, “Fresh Beer Tastes Better.” I’m absolutely sure that I’m not the target market for beer billboards, but I really don’t get this one. Isn’t beer fresher from a micro-brewery? I went to The Bud Light Website to see if I could find out anything else. The TV ads say that their beer is “day fresh.” What does that mean?

The exact wording says, “Millions of Americans have sampled day fresh beer. Have you?” Are they talking about all of the American tourists who come to the breweries and try the complimentary beer on the tour? Is that “day fresh” beer? They can’t possibly be talking about the bottled and canned beer at the grocery store. That stuff comes in a huge truck that took days to get here and then it sits on the floor and in the cooler case for more days until it’s sold. I worked at a convenience store one summer. That beer sat around forever and we were a busy store in a small town in rural Utah. There was nothing better to do there than drink beer and it still took longer than a day to sell out.

Doesn’t beer have to be aged? Doesn’t it have a fermentation process? What does “fresh” mean if the product has to be fermented? Doesn’t fermentation imply unfresh? What does that billboard mean?

I liked it better when my Bud Light billboard showed sexy guys. It made me think that if I drink beer, I might get to have sex with sexy guys. Don’t try to sell your product with logic, folks! It’s beer! It tastes like piss and the only reason people drink it is because it’s cheaper than gin.

What the advertising industry needs right now is some honesty. If they put up a billboard of an ugly guy and said, “Two more Bud Lights and he’ll be cute enough to kiss,” people would laugh and it would become a tag line. People would say it to each other at the bar when evaluating the pickings and then order themselves another Bud Light.

Even better, with billboards, they could do the Burma Shave thing where you have the ugly girl and it says, “The First Bud Light was Too Cold.” The next sign could have a slightly cuter girl and it would say, “The Second Bud Light was Too Warm.” The third sign would have the gorgeous blonde beauty and it would say, “The Third Bud Light was Just Right!”

If I can think of two totally honest slogans in fifteen minutes, what’s the matter with the advertising industry? What is the world coming to when a multi-million dollar company like Anheuser-Busch can’t get better than, “Fresh Beer Tastes Better”?