"Probably the World's Best Beer"

I’m 2 days late publishing this week. Still counting this as last week’s Loafe still.

Sue me.

Carlsberg has been running this advertisement (or advert-tiz-mint in the native tongue) at Premier League games for as long as I can recall. Fixed ad boards turn into digital ad boards, and there it is:

It caught my eye right away. It’s stuck with me. I think I laugh just a little bit every time, smiling the kind of smile that almost looks like a smirk, and just thinking, “You dawg. You dawg.”

It’s brilliant.

All the other advertisements? “World’s best X..” “World’s most…..” “Excellence…” The typical stuff. The buy this now type stuff.

Not only is the Carlsberg advert funny, but it’s sort of like an anti-campaign compared to all of the other stuff. Everyone is looking around saying, World’s premier this, or, Best grocery deliver service on the market since so and so.

But it’s not until Carlsberg comes along and does something different do I notice all that other stuff feels full of itself.

I’m also aware that the lager-lover’s at Carlsberg probably know what they’re doing with this kind of effort, playing against the game to stand out in the game. Kind of like Patagonia advertising their ‘don’t buy this jacket’ campaign for Black Friday in the NYT years ago. It was good for them. Sales rose 30%.

But, it’s still sticking your neck out and saying, Look over here, we’re playing the game differently. And that’s why I love it.

It’s an indicator that there are people gathering in meetings, plotting where to spend their money, and making an altogether different kind of decision than 97% of others.

Whether or not I own a business and start marketing that way is beside the point: I see that tick across the ad boards as I’m watching Liverpool struggle for a top 10 finish and I think to myself that somebody else gets it.

It makes me want to go and change my LinkedIn bio paragraph to say what I really want to, instead of the ChatGPT prompted one I have up there now that’s playing along with the game.

There’s a lot of ‘Probably the World’s Best Beer’ kind of people in the world - this wonderful thread calls them “High Agency.” They’re refreshing. They get it. They’re doing something about it.

And since the 97% is where the ‘success’ is, the reputation, the career, being a Probably-the-World’s-Best-Beer kind of person seems to also come with some obscurity, fewer dollars, and more gray area.

But a lot more edge.

Any Probably-the World’s-Best-Beer kind of people in your life?

Each week I bring together some things I’m struck by/enjoying. Here they are.

Readies

Rocked my sox last week. Super enthralling book and a subject that just made sense to my soul - which I guess it the whole heart of his writing. We want to belong. And when we don’t, as the Postscript says plainly: “Just dead inside.”

Listening

Watching

Neil Young. Just think, nobody was emailed to set up this concert.

Welp, have a great week. Thanks for reading.

Andrew