“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
–Mark Twain
Does this (via my college chum Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla) count as found history?
(Click thru for larger version.)
It’s a clever ad in a lad-magazine way. They’ve done a nice job with the retro look, and they play right to the “gee, maybe my Dad was cool” realization I and so many of my buddies have been going through as we age. Of course, if you’re sorry you missed out on unabashed Kennedy-era sexism, they also play to that too. (Why no distaff version: “Your Dad Wasn’t Your Mom’s First”?)
The sequel to the ad, Your Dad Wasn’t A Metrosexual, doesn’t work for me. Real or not–I’m assured in comments that all the photos used in the campaign are genuine pics from the 60s and 70s–the guys in the main picture look like 21st-century frat boys in Abercrombie & Fitch. My own Dad might have dressed like the guy in the first ad to go to a party, but there’s no way he ever wore a powder-blue cardigan to go fishing. Plus it’s pretty bold for the men’s lifestyle-magazine-industrial complex to take shots at “metrosexuals”–the very pseudo-phenomenon they created just a few years back to sell crap like men’s moisturizer, hair gel, and, yes, whisky cocktails.
What I want to see now is an ad where the retro Dads are awake and bleary-eyed at 4 am, pacing the wood panelled rec room with squalling babies, up to their necks in dirty diapers: “Your Dad Drank It… Because You Cried.”
11 responses so far ↓
1 mgrasso // Jan 18, 2008 at 9:57 am
Daddy was a salesman. Daddy drank!
2 Chris // Jan 18, 2008 at 9:59 am
““Your Dad Drank It… Because You Cried.”
Flawless victory!
3 Foxtown // Jan 18, 2008 at 11:04 am
My dad was geek. Not to say he wasn’t at good parties or any of those other things, but he was a geek.
This is pretty funny though.
4 Tom // Jan 18, 2008 at 11:12 am
“Your Dad beat the hell out of you and your mother whenever he got drunk. And he drank a lot of Canadian Club whiskey martinis.”
5 Rob // Jan 18, 2008 at 11:13 am
Foxtown: Geeks can be macho, too! In the comments to the post about this ad at Joey’s blog, someone writes: “Your dad never used the Standard Template Library. FORTRAN IV all the way, jocko. He threw down whisky. Neat.” (I don’t know what all those words mean, but it sounds good.)
6 Jess Nevins // Jan 19, 2008 at 8:32 am
“Your dad tried Sake in Japan, some gawdawful local crap in Korea during the war that gave me the trots, and about eighteen varieties of vodka and gin…but he always came back to Canadian Club.”
7 peaseblossom // Jan 19, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Can everyone play?
“Your Dad drank whiskey cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. He cheated on your Mom. With his secretary. Damn right they’re divorced.”
8 Rob // Jan 20, 2008 at 11:53 am
That’s the spirit!
9 Adam // Jan 20, 2008 at 6:31 pm
“Damn right your Dad’s been drinking Labatt’s Blue for over half a century. Blue collar? Blue beer!”
10 Nat // Feb 11, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Just as an FYI, NONE of the Canadian Club pictures are mock-ups. They’re all actual photographs. They were all taken in the 60’s & 70’s.
11 Rob // Apr 21, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Joey points out more Damn Right ads around Accordion City. I’ve seen them in London too. The generational focus of the ads seems to be blurring: wouldn’t the guys in the “tweezed” poster (blue cardigan notwithstanding) likely kick the ass of the guy in the “van” poster?
Leave a Comment