British brew Newcastle Brown Ale has launched a U.S. ad campaign that features some offbeat TV spots.
Representative sample:
The campaign also includes outdoor advertising, with billboards such as this one (a poster version is running in Boston):
Clever, yes? Except for its unfortunate echo of the classic definition of an alcoholic:
First the man takes a drink. Then the drink takes a drink. Then the drink takes the man.
Not saying the Newcastle folks were aware of that. Just saying they should have been.
Campaign Outsider 
Sir:
a) This campaign’s been running for years. Dunno about US TV because I am too cool to own one (lack of money makes one cool, right?) but I’ve seen the ads on YouTube for quite a while now.
b) That same billboard is up in the Financial District if I ain’t mistaken.
c) Newcastle Brown was my gateway beer into craft ales and the self-satisfaction of discussing hoppiness and IBUs in my limited edition bomber of oak aged Imperial IPA, and lemme tell you one thing: with its low ABV, it would take a long, long time to become an alcoholic through Newcastle alone.
Now if I could revisit the BU Pub of the early 2000s and have some Newcastle-and-Jameson boilermakers, that’s a different (and delicious!) story.
More, because I hate BMC macrobrews and their insidious hold on the American public. Here’s an awesome beer campaign:
http://craftedsocialmedia.com/2011/05/10/breckenridge-brewery-truth-in-beervertising/
And a quote from the good Doctor:
I called on Dr. Johnson one morning, when Mrs. Williams, the blind lady, was conversing with him. She was telling him where she had dined the day before. “There were several gentlemen there,” said she, “and when some of them came to the tea-table, I found that there had been a good deal of hard drinking.” She closed this observation with a common and trite moral reflection; which, indeed, is very ill-founded, and does great injustice to animals — “I wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves.” “I wonder, Madam,” replied the Doctor, “that you have not penetration to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
(link: http://www.samueljohnson.com/depressi.html#547)
And finally, some great lines from Housman:
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.