Advertising is a tough gig. Nobody really likes ads interrupting their show/movie/YouTube video/news article. But when done right, it can be iconic. For example, Childean ad agency OMD Santiago’s two-decade-old Star Wars campaign brilliantly integrated Cristal beer ads into the original trilogy.
The ads went viral over the weekend, and they are truly a sight to behold. Cristal was cleverly inserted into major moments throughout the movies, leading to hilarious moments like Obi-Wan Kenobi opening a cooler full of ice and Cristal while retrieving Anakin’s lightsaber for Luke. In another clip, Palpatine uses the Force to retrieve a can of Cristal — being an evil emperor is thirsty work, after all.
Unfortunately for thirsty Canadian Star Wars fans, Cristal apparently stopped being sold in Canada over a decade ago.
Around 2003 in Chile, when the original trilogy of Star Wars began airing on television there, they did this funny thing to avoid cutting to commercial breaks. They stitched the commercials into the films themselves. Here is one of them, with the English dub added in. pic.twitter.com/wC7N2vPNvv
— Windy 🛸 (@heyitswindy) March 2, 2024
Back in the early 2000s, the original Star Wars trilogy received its first dubbed TV broadcasts in Chile and OMD Santiago convinced broadcasters to run its in-movie advertisements. The move avoided the need to cut up the films for ad breaks by slipping “in-character” moments involving Cristal into the movies, complete with a little jingle.
Gizmodo reports that these adverts aired both in Star Wars and several other major films at the time. Moreover, OMD Santiago won an advertising award at Cannes for the campaign, which pissed off Lucasfilm (shocking, given George Lucas has had no qualms with editing the original trilogy over the years).
I think it’s high time we brought back this style of advertising. Never cut to a commercial again, just work it right into the content. It’s the superior mode of advertising.
And forget releasing the original edit — I want the full beer edit now.
