I OFTEN DRINK BEER, AND WHEN I DO, I RARELY DRINK DOS EQUIS

Personal meanderings about The Most Interesting Man in the World and maybe coffee too because, who knew, one of our greatest fears is the fear of being boring.

It’s true, I’m not a big fan of the beer, Dos Equis, but I was a fan of several aspects of their advertising campaign, The Most Interesting Man in the World (the original, not the short-lived “reboot” with a younger actor).

The campaign was successful by every measure. Although Heineken USA, which owns the Dos Equis brand, first introduced The Most Interesting Man in the World in 2006, they didn’t go national with the campaign until 2009, right in the middle of a recession. Nevertheless, sales of Dos Equis in the US went up 34% while most of the beer industry was seeing declines, and it became one of the top 10 selling imports.

People who claim to study such things say it’s one of the best ad campaigns ever launched, like in the top 5%. The iconic face of actor Jonathan Goldsmith became an early social media meme and some of the TV commercials have well over 1 million views on YouTube.

The advertising agency that created the campaign (Euro RSCG, now Havas) did some research, as they do, and concluded that one of our top fears is the fear of being boring. People like to be thought of as interesting. However, debilitating neurosis aside, the fear of being boring can’t be considered a very serious fear, like the fear of phone calls (Telephone phobia), or the fear of fear itself (Phobophobia); because, as far as I can tell, there isn’t even a phobia for the fear of being boring. (Note, there is a converse phobia, however, the fear of being bored: “Thaasophobia.”) So the folks at Havas decided to have fun with our fear of being boring.

The whole concept of The Most Interesting Man in the World is in and of itself, humorous, due in part to its incongruity, which is something humans often find funny. We all know there is no such thing as a most interesting person in the world and yet the narrator in the TV commercials and the actors play the entire premise almost dead straight, with only the tips of their tongues in their cheeks. This is juxtaposed against scenes that range from the seriously unlikely to the truly absurd. We watch the most interesting man release a bear from a trap, splash down in a space capsule, walk from the ocean carrying a treasure chest full of treasure, carry sled dogs through a blizzard, run “against traffic” during the running of the bulls, surf a 100-foot wave and compete like the GOAT at a wide variety of sports.

Each time we watch the most interesting man do interesting things, the voice over shares a handful of ludicrous “facts” that make the most interesting man even more interesting. They are funny because they are preposterous. Not all of them land, and the macho brags don’t even work as irony, but the list of those that make me smile is not short:

• He is the only man to ever ace a Rorschach test.
• Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact.
• He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels.
• He has won the lifetime achievement award, twice.
• He can speak French…in Russian.
• People hang on his every word, even the prepositions.
• His snow globe gets 24 inches of fresh powder annually.
• If he were to pat you on your back, you would list it on your resume.
• He is the life of parties he’s never even attended.
• When in Rome, they do as he does.
• He never says anything tastes like chicken…even chicken.
• He has inside jokes with complete strangers.
• If opportunity knocks and he’s not at home, opportunity waits.

Less successful, for me, are the short commercials where the most interesting man offers advice and/or something like social and cultural commentary while surrounded, as always, by uncommonly good-looking people who—along with a tedious emphasis on exaggerated masculinity—represent the ad campaign’s failure to escape some beer commercial cliches while breaking the mold in other areas.

The advice commercials work best when his comments are almost reminiscent of Jack Handy’s “Deep Thoughts” from Saturday Night Live in the 1990’s[1]. In one of these short commercials, the most interesting man tells us to “Find out what you don’t do well, and then don’t do that thing.”

But I digress.

Despite the tired “manly man” tropes and the overt absurdity of the scenarios, The Most Interesting Man in the World is oddly compelling to a degree that goes beyond an appreciation for the humor to touch on what might be a mildly uncomfortable truth. Maybe we don’t wish to be the most interesting person in the world, but we might imagine we could be more interesting and have better stories.

Here is Where I Finally Mention Coffee

Which brings us somewhat precisely to one of the reasons you work in the specialty coffee industry and one of the reasons people drink specialty coffee. It’s interesting. Sure, not the only reason but, I think, an overlooked or diminished reason. Confidence in the idea that what we do is interesting is important to how we brand, market, and sell specialty coffee. I mean, have you ever heard someone talk lovingly about the commercial coffee they drink? You haven’t. Millions of people prefer to drink traditional coffees that would not score well on a specialty coffee cupping table, and to each their own, but those coffees aren’t very interesting.

You don’t have to raise your hand or anything, and this is just between you and me, but isn’t your job often the most interesting job in the room? Not the world, just the room. If you’re a coffee roaster, when was the last time you told someone you roast coffee for a living and they didn’t have questions?

At the same time, we should wear the idea that what we do is interesting as a loose garment and not take ourselves too seriously. Otherwise, we ruin it. Pretentiousness is a pitfall present in most communities anchored by a “maker culture” and nothing flips cool to uncool faster than even a hint of true pomposity. Pretentious coffee people are low hanging fruit for comedians, YouTubers, and angry reddit … uh, redditers.

Yes, what we do is interesting and we should leverage this in our marketing and communications, but also, “lighten up Francis.”[2]

The specialty coffee industry has matured. By my wholly subjective reckoning, I’d say the specialty coffee industry is at least 50 years old. I base this on 1973 being the year Erna Knutsen used the phrase “specialty coffee” in an interview with Tea & Coffee Trade Journal.  As a starting gun, this point in time makes sense for a few reasons, not just the coining of a phrase, but it is still fundamentally arbitrary. You can “yes but” the beginning of specialty coffee as far back into the history of coffee drinking as you want (or as far forward for that matter).

The point is, we are no longer a young industry segment. I’m not saying we are at risk of being curmudgeonly and dogmatic, but we’re at risk of being curmudgeonly and dogmatic. Note, it’s entirely possible, after 25 years in specialty coffee, that this is just me projecting, so grain of salt and all that.

In addition to the humorous premise, the creative team at Hava did a few things that were, if not exactly rule breaking, unexpected. They used a senior citizen as their spokesperson when their target demographic was much younger, and they sold a positive with a negative, or a statement that was negative-ish.

The actor depicting The Most Interesting Man in the World was 68 when the campaign launched and over 70 when it went national, an age I can no longer consider very old, but we can all agree is not young. It’s true, the most interesting man is younger in some of the ambiguous “archival footage” of his exploits, but the gray-bearded man who is pitching beer at the end of each commercial, while famously handsome, doesn’t register as young for his age or unusually spry or oddly youthful in dress or manners.

What I like about this is the harkening to future aspirations. The Most Interesting Man in the World is no longer young but he is in spirit if not embodiment what young people might hope to be when they too are no longer young. Setting aside the absurdities for more simple achievements, to look back on an interesting life well lived but still be vital and relevant, with more stories yet to come, is not a bad wish.

Specialty coffee drinkers are interesting vicariously through the coffee they drink and the stories behind it.

Of course, the Dos Equis commercials try, and succeed I suppose, to have their cake and eat it too. Everyone surrounding The Most Interesting Man in the World as he makes his beer pitch is at least half his age. It would be creepier than it is if the character was not depicted as possessing some detached, almost child-like, delight in his achievements. “Did you see what just happened? Can you believe I just orbited the earth in that space capsule? How does that even happen?”

But I digress.

Then, there is the counterintuitive campaign slogan: “I don’t often drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.” The most immediate conclusion might be this: “If he’s the most interesting man in the world and if he rarely drinks beer, then beer must not be very interesting.”

A more cynical thought, and one that was expressed by beer lovers was: “If I only drank Dos Equis, I wouldn’t drink much beer either.” But this little hot take fails to grasp that we’re talking here about the most interesting man in the world … for Pete’s sake. The impression that the commercials actually made was the impression intended:

A defining characteristic of the most interesting man in the world is the volume and variety of his unique experiences, including, one must assume, his beverage experiences. He’s drinking many different types of drinks, all of them presumably the most interesting of their kind, and the “beer slot” just doesn’t come around that often so imagine how good Dos Equis must be if he’s reserved that beer slot for Dos Equis. QED, maybe.

Just one more thing.

Each interesting man commercial ends with him saying, “Stay thirsty my friends,” which I take to mean, “stay hungry” with a beverage advertising twist. If The Most Interesting Man in the World ever became complacent, satisfied with his lot in life; if his thirst for adventure and new experiences could ever be quenched, he would quite simply cease to be The Most Interesting Man in the World. Remaining thirsty is the secret of his success. And also, it is easier said than done. In a way, he’s letting us off the hook because clearly it is a rare person who can stay thirsty all of the time. The most we can hope for is to be thirsty more often.

Fortunately, in the coffee business it is not difficult to remain curious, if not exactly thirsty. As the coffee farmer said, “Coffee teaches us 100 lessons, but we only learn one each year.” He was speaking of farming an annual crop, of course, but I have always found this to be true of coffee in general in that I’ve never felt close to knowing everything there is to know about coffee as a crop or a product or an industry. I’ve never been bored or suffered from Thaasophobia.

On the wall near my desk is the Japanese kanji for “beginner’s mind,” the calligraphy done by a friend of mine not long before I entered the coffee industry. It’s followed me to every coffee job I’ve had and it remains just as relevant and meaningful to my coffee career now as it was 25 years ago.

Stay interesting my friends.

 
[1] “Jack Handey is an American humorist. He is most famous for his Deep Thoughts, a large corpus of surrealistic one-liner jokes. Deep Thoughts were first seen in small comedy magazine Army Man Comics edited by George Meyer and continued in National Lampoon in 1984 though gained popularity when they were read on Saturday Night Live beginning in 1991.”
[2] “Lighten up Francis” is a line from the 1981 Bill Murray film, Stripes.