Category Archives: advertising

Ages ago, my friends and I used to drink 40s of St. Ides, a potent and, if I recall correctly, almost syrupy malt liquor. Good times. In the mid-nineties, Ides had a pretty amazing marketing campaign in which they hired big name rappers to record commercials promoting St. Ides usage. Here’s a(n unfortunately incomplete) pretty choice one featuring an atypically sluggish verse from Biggie Smalls:

The real hot deal though was a rare-ish promotional cassette that contained recordings of each of the commercials. My friend, Julio, had a copy of the cassette and loaned it to me and my then-(dorm)-roommate so we could make a pretty obnoxious answering machine message with it. For some reason, we chose the Nate Dogg ad. If I were to do it again, I would almost certainly choose the (first) Snoop one if only for the mention of the house full of hos. Anyway, and I apologize for this, here’s a video of the cassette. Skip to around the two minute, eight second mark to hear the ad that made the answering machine and confused Ken’s Nan to no end.

Sometime later, St. Ides introduced a new line of fruity, over-carbonated beverages called Special Brews. I only recall drinking them once and they tasted like shit, but that didn’t stop me from plastering my then-living room (I was out of the dorms by then—a turn of events not completely unrelated to the Special Brew incident) with posters promoting them. Unfortunately, the only image I could find of these classy posters has some website branded on it. Please don’t go to that website.