A BIZARRE yet truly amazing set of beer adverts faultlessly cut into Star Wars when it was shown on national TV two decades ago have gone viral after resufacing online.
Rather than cutting to traditional ad breaks, the hilarious 2003 campaign for Chile’s Cerveza Cristal Beer saw ads inserted directly into scenes in the classic films.
“Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough” Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker in the 1977 classic, as he reaches to collect what should be a lightsaber but is, of course, an ice-cold bottle of Cerveza Cristal.
Denise da Fonseca Dreyer a marketeer for the Cristal brand in the Guardian explained that she had to look for ‘something innovative’ as a way of selling the product and came up with this wacky idea.
“The objective was to stand out during the ad break. They were long, sometimes there’d be 15 commercials,” she revealed.
Ignacio González was involved with finding the places to insert the ads. He said: “I looked for cuts in the film to make the ad break, moments where actors reached for something or looked over at something.
“I never touched or intervened with the film itself.”
And the genius campaign even had a price tag that wasn’t out of this world.
For the lightsaber stunt, González simply fixed white fabric on to a colleague’s arms, mimicking Obi-Wan’s robes, then casually tossed some ice and beers into a trunk and had the Jedi master retrieve a bottle.
“It was filmed with a budget of around $10 in a closet,” he added.
While it looks like it cost $10 the ad campaign went on to win multiple awards, including the Cannes Grand Prix.
It also included Luke pausing his training to grab a Cerveza Cristal in The Empire Strikes Back, and the Emperor cracking one open while selling the Dark Side to Luke in Return of the Jedi.
Not everyone was happy though, with both purist fans and Lucasfilm themselves taking offence to the cheeky beer ads.
A legal battle with the movie giants saw the adverts withdrawn as they had “exploited the goodwill” of Lucasfilm.
It may have been a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, but the brilliant commercials – which have been shared by Elon Musk – have seen a boom in sales for the brazen beer company and that damn Cerveza Cristal jingle will be stuck with you for life.
