Farmer's Second Attempt, Ally's Attempt, Farmer's First A... - Oskar Blues | Clapboard Ad Archive

Oskar Blues’ launch campaign for SOB in 2017, conceived with Agency Squid, stages a pointed, culturally literate critique of alcohol industry marketing clichés while extending the rebellious spirit that defines Oskar Blues’ brand DNA. Developed for the Food & Drink category, the campaign’s central creative conceit enlists a blue-collar character — Farmer — to parody the well-worn tropes of so-called big beer communication in a sequence of six film assets under the meta title Farmer’s Second Attempt, Ally’s Attempt, Farmer’s First A. Rather than following the prescriptive, hollow language and familiar spokesperson posturing typical of macro-brewery advertising, the Farmer stumbles through a corporate script meant to hawk the SOB Moscow Mule, grows distracted, and instead candidly advocates for a colleague as a more authentic face for the brand — an approach that sits squarely in Clapboard’s FORMAT#12—Parody or Borrowed Format. The result is an intentional, self-aware send-up of rinse-and-repeat beer marketing, which both highlights the bland sameness that dominates the alcoholic drinks sector and demonstrates SOB’s refusal to play by those generic rules. By anchoring the narrative in personality-driven, gently comic exchanges and rough edges rather than slick posturing or category jargon, Agency Squid not only signals the working-class, real-world origins of Oskar Blues but also foregrounds the value of idiosyncratic internal culture at a moment when authenticity is currency. This self-reflexive campaign shuns the anonymous, committee-crafted image of its category competitors, consciously replacing empty slogans with the kind of low-key, human storytelling that actually builds trust and loyalty — not just awareness. Clapboard rates this 54/100. The campaign matters because it demonstrates how parody, when grounded in genuine brand voice rather than irony for irony’s sake, can become a tool for meaningful differentiation in crowded legacy categories.