Interbrew SA, Dancing

Two girlfriends dance with two guys, but when one girl asks the other to join her to the bathroom, what are the two buddies to do?

One stands awkwardly to the side while the other continues to dance by himself, though his friend soon fixes him with a cold stare, as if to say, "Casually dancing by yourself within proximity of another man is gay, yo." Then he just shakes his head no. So his friend stops dancing and meekly shoves his hands in his pockets. The tagline (and name of the $10 million campaign): "Cheers To Friends."

“The ‘Cheers. To Friends.’ advertising campaign communicates in a humorous and sophisticated way what true friends do with – and for – each other,” said Rainer Meyrer, Director of Marketing for InBev USA’s Canadian Brands in a press release for the ads. “The goal was to create advertising that touches our target audience by portraying truly authentic situations which 21+ consumers will easily find themselves in. I think we achieved exactly that by capturing some of those simple, daily-life-situations that all of us have been in before."

Labatt Blue is the #1 selling Canadian beer and the #3 imported beer in the United States.

While some may offer that this commercial offers up stereotypical heterosexuality for humor, it seems more to support it rather than make light of the situation. If friendship was so strong here, macho posing would be irrelevant, and the two should be able to dance together for fun until the women return.

Ironically, throughout the commercial, two women dance together in the background without any such nonsense. Because that's not gay, that's just "sexy."