How to Write a Catchy Beer Ad
By CHRIS BALLARD THE NEW YORK TIMES

John Ferreira, a 35-year-old music producer who is known for television commercials, is adamant about the nature of his signature recording. ''It is not,'' he says with disdain, ''a jingle. I hate that word. I mean, I've done the 'Power of Cheese' ads, so I know a jingle. This'' -- he pauses -- this is rock and roll.''

He walks over to a computer in his Chicago recording studio and pulls up a clip of the ad in question, a recent Coors Light spot. Two power chords detonate out of the speakers and an unseen vocalist begins to chant in what could best be described as an inebriated karaoke growl: ''I. Love. Football on TV. Shots of Geena Lee. Hanging with my friends. And . . . twins!''

The music is accompanied by a montage of young people having what appears to be extraordinary amounts of fun, punctuated by shots of the former ''Baywatch'' star Geena Lee Nolin and a pair of blond, curvaceous twins emitting soft-porn smiles. For the second stanza, even more guitars kick in and the pace quickens. ''I. Love. Burritos at 4 a.m. Parties that never end. Dogs that love cats. And . . . and twins! And I. Love. You. Too!'' There is a brief lull, some guitar feedback and then a group shout of ''Here's to love songs!''

If you've watched television in the last nine months, especially any N.F.L. games, chances are you've seen the ad, which is titled ''Love Songs.'' Something of a cultural phenomenon, it has incited sports-bar sing-alongs, turned the (real-life) twins, Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski, into pseudo-celebrities and become a popular download on the Internet. Though you won't see ''Love Songs'' during today's Super Bowl -- Anheuser-Busch owns exclusive rights to beer advertising for the telecast -- the ad has nonetheless become the standard against which all other beer ads are measured.

Companies like Coors don't need focus groups to tell them that for young males, Beautiful Girls + Guitars + Beer = Fun. The age-old problem is how to insert your brand into the equation. Do so and you reach the coveted 21-to-27-year-old male demographic, ''the Holy Grail of beer advertising,'' says Benj Steinman of Beer Marketer's Insights, an industry newsletter. How one brewery accomplished this with a jingle -- or ''anthem,'' as those who worked on the ad prefer to call it -- can be considered a primer on the art of marketing to the Maxim generation.

When Ron Askew, 48, became chief of marketing at Coors in October 2001, he directed the company's ad agency, Foote, Cone & Belding, to design a campaign that was ''young, music-driven and full of guy insights.'' FCB in turn sent off 30 creative teams for six weeks to come up with ideas. They came back with dozens of concepts. A couple, like a montage of frenzied party scenes set to the Fatboy Slim song ''Because We Can,'' made it to the small screen. Most didn't.

The team of Aaron Evanson and John Godsey provided the ''Love Songs'' idea. Two hours before the meeting, they were driving back from a focus group in Indianapolis when Godsey, 38, came up with the idea of writing a love song for guys. His inspiration was ''I Love,'' a 1974 hit by Tom T. Hall in which the country musician extols the virtues of, among other things, pickup trucks, coffee in a cup and little fuzzy pups. Knowing that puppies weren't likely to sell beer, they began to compile a list of things they thought would -- ''sports, supermodels, eating and hanging out with friends,'' Evanson says.

In putting it into verse, they started with what Godsey calls a ''no-brainer'': football on TV. Next came the supermodel. ''Our first choice was Pamela Lee,'' says Evanson, 32. ''Then came Geena Lee, and Jenny McCar-thy. And -- you have to twist it a bit, Yasmine Bleeeeeth.'' He pauses. ''After all, there are only so many beautiful supermodel iconic women who rhyme with TV.''

Originally, Evanson wanted the second stanza to honor dogs that eat rather than love cats, but Godsey talked him out of it. ''We needed to show that guys have a soft side,'' Godsey says. As for the twins, Evanson says, ''we were trying to think of what rhymes with friends, and then it hit -- guys like twins!'' Godsey adds, ''Triplets didn't rhyme.'' By the end of the ride, they had a basic working version. It was crude. It was simple. It was catchy. It was exactly what Coors wanted.

It was also innovative. The first rule of jingles is that they must trumpet the brand -- ''This Bud's for you,'' ''The night belongs to Michelob.'' In the lyrics to ''Love Songs,'' though, there is no mention of Coors Light. The reason, Godsey says, is that they wanted ''to make it sound like a real band'' so that ''people would respond to it as a song, not an ad.'' That's where Ferreira came in.

A veteran of European funk-rock bands, Ferreira has worked in commercials since 1995, when he founded Genuine Music. His directions from Godsey were to choose a vocalist who had a ''young raw voice'' so the song wouldn't sound ''slick and jingle-y.'' Ferreira called in 32-year-old Steven Simoncic, who goes by ''Slimmy,'' a former lead singer for a Chicago band called Every Hundredth Monkey. After trying out a Sex Pistols-like delivery, Slimmy switched to what Ferreira calls a ''kind of monotone, half-drunk voice'' because, as Godsey says, ''we wanted there to be a wink in the delivery.''

The ''band,'' which consisted of Ferreira on guitar, Slimmy on vocals and studio musicians, recorded continuosuly over the course of more than 14 hours. Slimmy did more than 40 iterations alone of the final repetition of ''and . . . and twins!'' ''We wanted people to know we didn't take this too seriously, so we made it seem like he was having trouble rhyming,'' Godsey says. ''He goes, 'And, and,' -- and then he's like, oh, I'll just go with twins again.'' Though the final product is seamless, it is actually a compilation of snippets from more than 30 different takes. Genuine's engineer, Mike Tholen, who once worked with the hard-rock band Ministry, took about two months to finish it. For producing the music on an ad like this, companies like Genuine receive $30,000 to $100,000. (With the video, the final production on this ad probably cost between $750,000 and $1 million.)

After recording a rough track of the music in late October, FCB presented the concept to Coors, which approved it. In January, they secured rights to the Hall song, hired a director and cast actors. ''We wanted people you'd felt like you'd known your whole life,'' Evanson says. It is a fine line beer ads have to tread, to make the people in ads seem just like you, only a bit better -- the industry buzz word is aspirational. ''The women in the party scenes had to look hot but approachable, someone I wouldn't be scared to talk to,'' Godsey says. The same went for the twins, whom Godsey says they chose because they were ''All-American and real.''

Once filmed, ''Love Songs'' went through ''post-testing,'' a series of corporate round tables and focus groups. The spot made it through without any major changes, just a directive to tone down the shots of Geena Lee and the twins because, as Godsey says, ''Coors's mantra is to 'show sexy not sex.''' The spot was put on the air in April, and by football season, it had become inescapable. The 26-year-old Klimaszewski sisters sang the national anthem at a Patriots game in November, posed for a Maxim spread and appeared on the game show ''Fear Factor.'' People called Coors by the dozens asking to buy the ''CD,'' and Web surfers searched for the tune -- some chat-room denizens thought it was by the rock band P.O.D.; others thought it was by the Cure.

The key to the ad's success, Godsey says, was the humor: ''We've found that a lot of women like the ad because they can see their husband or boyfriend liking those things, and laugh at him.''

Now the twins are spawning clones. A new Miller Lite ad -- under the guise of being two young men's fantasy commercial -- shows two impossibly buxom women getting into a catfight over whether the beer is ''less filling'' or ''tastes great,'' shedding their clothes in the process. The battle ends -- what fight doesn't? -- in a vat of wet cement (and in the cable version, one says to the other, ''Let's make out''). Shortly after it began appearing, someone who worked on the Coors ad got a call from a friend. Sorry, the friend said, your commercial is now my second-favorite one on TV.