Stating the honest or stating the obvious.

This week saw the launch of the first advertising campaign from Scottish craft beer company BREWDOG.

Notable, given this quote from BREWDOG founders, James Watt & Martin Dickie:

“We’d rather take our money and set fire to it than spend it on advertising.”

Anyway, the work, created by Uncommon, claims to be ‘The most honest advert ever’.

That’s quite a big claim.

Not least because ‘Ever’ is a long time – 4.543 Billion years to be precise.

It’s also not true – which is, in itself, ironic.

‘For Sale’ is the probably the most honest advert ever in my opinion. It’s been written on signs around the world since, well, people who wanted to sell stuff learned to write.

I’m also not convinced that, strictly speaking, what BREWDOG and Uncommon have done is honest in the first place. It’s more ‘obvious’ than ‘honest’.

Conventional Media, like outdoor and TV, doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is: a break in the middle of a TV programme to sell you stuff. A fucking great big screen on the side of the road – to sell you stuff.

As such, I’m not too sure there’s a whole load of people wandering the streets wondering what those big boards with pictures on them are. Or, for that matter, questioning what those breaks in the middle of their favourite TV show might be. That’s because there’s nothing underhand about conventional advertising Media and, more to the point, it’s because the entire human race already knows that these are adverts. That’s the deal – a contract that we’ve all bought into.

In fact, I would argue that what BREWDOG and Uncommon have done isn’t honest at all. It’s a publicity stunt. And if we’re being really honest with ourselves.

Which one of them is the publicity for?