I feel the need for a Guinness after this ad...

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Nice! Do you know what market this was meant for? Voiceover music sounds like Sammy Davis Jr... The mudskippers are cute; I hadn't thought of that particular downside to being a mudskipper...

Emily - this ad's been running on British TV for months. Yes, the song is "River of Life" - not sure if it's the original Sammy Davies Jnr singing it.
Guinness have a tradition of creating very high quality TV/cinema ads that are worth watching just for themselves - you might remember the one about white horses in surf, for instance. The sales plug in that was was so subliminal as to be unnoticable.
Guiness are so proud of their ads that they've put them all on their website: www.guinness.com
(No, I am NOT connected with the company!)

Oops, correction: It's Rhythm of Life. And it IS Sammy Davis Jnr.
Here in the UK there's very little debate over evolution, so it's simply seen as a good ad, illustrating the theme of "good things come to those who wait" (i.e., just wait a couple of billion years and you'll get really good beer!) in a gently humerous manner by showing the ultimate origins of three typical beer drinkers. It's you Americans who seem to see political stuff in it.

I always thought Guinness tasted like mud. Guess my taste never evolved.

Am I within my rights in complaining that the commercial doesn't actually follow the evolutionary history of H. sapiens but instead includes species which are not in our path of ancestry?

Am I within my rights in complaining that the commercial doesn't actually follow the evolutionary history of H. sapiens but instead includes species which are not in our path of ancestry?

Can beer be horizontally transfered?

It's not completely accurate, but at least it tries to stick to currently-extinct species instead of falling into the fallacy of having humans evolve from currently-existing apes.

It's been on for at least a few years now, long enough to get a special version for Guiness Extra-Cold (they've been redoing their iconic ads with an icy twist to market it).

And Guiness tastes fantastic, although it's a bit heavy and tends to knock me out. I'm more of a Deuchars IPA man myself.

By Alex Whiteside (not verified) on 14 Feb 2007 #permalink

Obligatory music nerding: Rhythm of Life is from the Cy Coleman/Dorothy Fields musical Sweet Charity. (Other hits from the show which you may know are Big Spender and If My Friends Could See Me Now.) In the film version, it is sung Sammy Davis, Jr. (who got star billing despite being in it for less than ten minutes), though it would be incorrect to call that the "original" version; the role was orignally played by Arnold Soboloff on Broadway.
The amusing bit is that in the show, the song is sung by a character who is preacher. (Admittedly, he's from an odd religion, but it's actually a kinda cool one. If you've seen the show, you know what I mean.)

By Pseudonym (not verified) on 14 Feb 2007 #permalink

I have to agree that is a great ad, but I just can't drink Guiness any more. After working (as a roofer) for a absolutely great home brewer, it's just so much blah. . .

Now this, is a great brew. Meaty like the Guiness, but far more delectible. Unibroue is my favorite commercial brewery - excepting the abbey's my old boss brought back from his Belgian beer tour. Most of them reserve their best for direct sale and use in the abbey.

Brilliant!

this ad's been running on British TV for months.

Interesting, because I first saw it well over a year ago: somebody on a mailing-list I belong to posted a link to it in November 2005. A websearch finds references to it from October '05, and it won an award at the Cannes Film Festival in June of last year.

By wolfwalker (not verified) on 15 Feb 2007 #permalink

Interesting, because I first saw it well over a year ago: somebody on a mailing-list I belong to posted a link to it in November 2005. A websearch finds references to it from October '05, and it won an award at the Cannes Film Festival in June of last year.
I said "months" in the meaning of "I can't remember exactly when I first saw this, but it was in the last year or so."
It's a good ad, but not so good that I remember where I was and what I was doing the first time I saw it!

A few years back someone wrote to my local paper complaining about evolution. He described it as "scientists think fish sprout wings and fly up into the trees." And they expect us to believe that. Tsk tsk.

So when I first saw this commercial, I didn't automatically think it was just a nice, innocuous, fairly humorous use of evolutionary theory going mainstream. It shows the same three individuals undergoing changes.

Normally, of course, this would not be a problem, since it's clearly meant to be a metaphor and funny. Except that I suspect the letter-writer isn't all the uncommon, and so I admit my first thought was "uh-oh. Here comes another Letter to the Editor, and another generation of really clueless Creationists."