Miller Lite turns old sexist posters into compost...plus 3 more campaigns that reimagine embarrassing past ads

It's time to face the music: every brand has made mistakes in its advertising history with the beer industry being one of the worst offenders with a long-standing track record of objectifying women in its advertising campaigns. For years, beer brands would use barely clothed women to sell light beer or portray women as nothing more than servants to their beer-swilling husbands.

But that's no excuse to hide them away. Every embarrassing past ad can be a smart fun way for brands to connect with consumers on a deeper level. By acknowledging and addressing past missteps, brands demonstrate their willingness to learn and grow, building trust and loyalty with their audience. In fact, it's often the brands that are willing to confront their mistakes head-on that end up coming out on top. So don't shy away from the past - embrace it and take advantage of everything you're not proud of like Miller Lite and the others in this post do.

Bad $#!T to Good $#!T | Miller Lite

Miller Lite takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the serious topic of addressing the beer industry's sexist history head-on. The brand has rummaged through its back catalogue and identified all its outdated and misogynistic beer ads and turned them into compost for the brewing process. The ad is fronted by comedian Ilana Glazer who adds a fun commentary to proceedings and is set to run during Women's History Month. Furthermore, the brand will donate over five times the amount it spends on the project to Pink Boots Society, a nonprofit benefiting women in brewing.  

More embarrassing past beer ads reimagined...

McCannReposter | SKOL

Skol, a Brazilian beer brand, chose to atone for years of sexist advertising by teaming up with six Brazilian artists to rebrand its old ads for today's audience. In the video campaign that accompanied the rebranded poster ads, the artists share why they chose to partner up with Skol to take their ads from objectifying women to celebrating them.

Budweiser International Women's Day Ads |

To tackle its past history of objectifying women in its ads, Budweiser launched a campaign for International Women's Day in 2019. Their full-page color ads in major publications juxtaposed sexist Bud ads from the past with updated versions empowering women. This bold move acknowledged Budweiser's past mistakes and showed its commitment to creating more balanced advertising. The brand joined the "#SeeHer" effort and began running ads through the ANA-backed Gender Equality Measure testing.

And one non-beer embarrassing past ad too...

Remake Challenge | Nestle Cremora | McCann

The adverts for Nestle’s Cremora are instantly recognisable – but dated for a modern 21st-century audience. To show Nestle’s steps towards inclusion and diversity and to reflect the changing market who enjoy their products, they remade the famous ads with a more diverse cast. And subverted them. By remaking the advert and flipping the slogan of ‘it’s not inside, it’s on top’ to ‘it’s not on top, it’s inside’, Nestle was able to showcase that the phrase applied to people too. Focusing on inclusivity and allowing the inside of everyone to shine resulted in 57.3 impressions and 4 million engagements with the brand’s joy sentiment also increasing.