This beer advertisement, created by ad agency George Patterson, features persuasive narration by actor John Meillon and Bob (Beetles) Young’s stirring re-arrangement of Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven theme. The clip celebrates Australia’s traditions of hard work and play, inviting viewers to enjoy a ‘big, big beer’.

Produced for Queensland’s Bulimba Gold Top Beer, the ad focuses on a male white-collar worker, selling a carefree lifestyle of weekend leisure with ‘the boys’ at a bar and betting at the track (women are virtually absent). There are loving close-ups of the beverage to whet our thirst, and even shots of a glass tipping towards us, putting us directly in the drinker’s shoes. Meillon’s rich baritone and impassioned narration are crucial to the ad’s enjoyment, helping us ignore some of the clunkier lines (‘to swap a few bets … over a couple of wets’).

The script would be refined and the campaign polished soon enough, with the Bulimba ad serving as a prototype for a long-running, more iconic series of ads for Victoria Bitter (VB). The VB ads retained Meillon and the music but introduced a catchier refrain (‘A hard-earned thirst needs a big cold beer’) and notably expanded the audience to include blue-collar workers and women.