IAVA and Miller hates veterans

| July 10, 2011

You’ve probably seen this disingenuous commercial from Miller Beer;

In the commercial, the spokesperson claims that if you send them your Miller bottle caps, they’ll donate a dime to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. That’s not exactly true – they donate a dime to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Notice all of the T-shirts with tire tracks on them in the commercial. Those are the “branded” merchandise of IAVA. Apparently, the twelve packs of Millers has the “brand“on them, too. While it’s partially true that the dime will go to benefit an Afghanistan or Iraq veteran, it’ll be one of those 13 veterans employed by IAVA…or one of the 26 non-veteran employees. I wonder how many of the people in the commercial were veterans.

And I wonder how Miller got away with filming the commercial without Rieckhoff’s knobby head in there somewhere.

Our buddy Alex Horton tweeted this morning;

I feel ya, Alex.

I’ll be honest, I never drink Miller…even if someone buys it for me…but I’ve turned away advertising and publicity for other organizations who support IAVA (including the singing group 4Troops who donates part of their CD sales to IAVA), and I’ve told them why I’m turning them down. I hope you join me in my lifetime boycott of IAVA and Miller Beer. And tell your local vendor why you’re not buying Miller.

Category: Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Shitbags

26 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Eleven_Bravo

Oh the irony of this one because my wife is a bartender and I will make sure she refers this information to her customers.

DirtDartBill

Well, so much for the High Life

Sporkmaster

Found this video that was posted a year ago that tries to respond to the question above.

gruntsgt

I’d rather drink Vietnamese “Tiger beer” than that weasel piss Miller tries to pass of as beer.

melony

grr…no more Miller for me…next?

DaveA

Tiger Beer, or “33”, or bambity baa (sp) before Miller. My parents had a summer cottage in Wisconsin near Milwaukee and every summer on vacation my Mom and Dad went to visit the brewery. Bypassed Miller every summer. Got to Vietnam and wouldn’t use Miller except to kill the foilage.

Rich

Shiner all the way!

Tman

Wow. Just wow. I think this commercial would fool anyone not in the know.

AW1 Tim

It fooled me. Not anymore, though.

I do make it a point not to buy Miller beer for any reason. They pissed me right off by donating tens of thousands of dollars to La Raza to support pro-illegal immigrant rallies a few years back. After that, i said “see ya!” to anything and everything associated with Miller.

NotSoOldMarine

I prefer my beer without political activism. Besides, since Miller’s beer sucks and they’re owned by a British conglomerate there isn’t a good reason to drink it anyway.

DirtDartBill

I’ll have to see if I can find some San Miguel over here.

Tman

Was there any chance that the Miller company itself was bamboozled? By that I mean, they didn’t research what this organization was all about but just assumed that since it’s named Iraq/Afghanistan veterans of America, that it was a ‘worthy’ thing to sponsor. I don’t know anything about this whole thing besides reading it for the first time here, so just curious.

NotSoOldMarine

re #12

There’s a half dozen guys at MillerSABmaking six figures a year whose job is exactly what you just described. They either knew or their people are terrible at their jobs.

The Laughing Man

#9

Miller is pretty bad anyway from a quality standpoint (though perhaps not as bad as the BEAST, but I digress). The commercials fooled me at first too though, they don’t go out of their way to pimp out the tire-treads. The shirts don’t really give it away unless you’re paying attention; IAVA’s logo is at the end, but blink and you miss it.

Similarly on the ban list for me is Absolut for similar behavior in the past (google “absolut mexican ad”). Not a problem since that stuff is again only just a bit above Fleischmann’s rocket fuel…sorry, vodka, in quality. Also by extension the ban is spread to all V&S Group-specific products (Level & Fris Vodka, Plymouth Gin, Cruzan Rum).

I am noticing a pattern here though, most of the hooch brewers stooping to this stuff generally market product pretty close in quality to fire water…

Claymore

I see this as marketing to their “new” demographic. Where these beers used to appeal to blue collar workers in the past, Miller, along with PBR and other beers of this strata, are now favorites of the effete hipster douchebag crowd. They know this and are trying to capitalize on it.

NHSparky

Miller who? Never drank them, took the brewery tour when I was a young boot fresh out of Great Mistakes. Wasn’t impressed.

Now Guinness, OTOH…if they sponsored IAVA (I know, not happening) I might shed a few tears.

Old Trooper

Claymore; how the hell could that rat piss PBR be a favorite amongst the effete hipsters? They really don’t have a clue about what is quality, I guess. As for the Miller promotion…..we have one of their big bottle cap jugs shaped like a giant bottle of High Life in our post bar. I think I’m going to have to make a command decision and have it taken out. No need for a AL Post to have an IAVA support mechanism front and center.

Claymore

OT, I have no idea why they chose such a low quality beer to embrace. From what I can gather, they think this is some sort of counter-culture thing; “I’ll pretend to like what everyone says is crap so it’ll make me seem cool and edgy and everyone else will seem mainstream and un-cool.” The best quote I’ve ever seen on this is from Time magazine:

“Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They’re the people who wear t-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you’ve never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care.”
— Time, July 2009

So that’s where I think Miller was aiming…at this demographic which drinks shit beer and has shit taste in music and politics, but thinks that it’s relevant. Just my opinion. 🙂

Just A Grunt

This collaboration has been going on for a while and I sent a letter to Miller Brewing back in May when I first became aware of.

And of course I wrote about it.

FreddieLounds

Miller also sponsors the Folsom Street fair.

Tman

Well, the way some of us were fooled, I’m sure the greater American public would be too.

Dave Thul

My taste buds can’t tell the difference in most lite beers, but I stick with Budweiser for its support of the military. For 10 years they have been giving free admission to the theme parks they own, and they don’t make a big deal about it, they just do it.

AW1 Tim

#14:

I also knew about Absolut’s sell out to La Raza and also put it on by banned list. I don’t drink a lot of vodka, mostly it’s for the hot days. I’ve switched to SKYY or Finlandia and like them both. Mostly it’s bourbon as my drink of choice, with Guinness or Murphy’s for beer.

Old Trooper

Tim; try Shakers Vodka. It’s premium Vodka made right here in the USA (also, my home state of Minnesota….I’m just sayin).

Tman

The way I see it, even if the general public were to be told about the truth of this organization, most would just shrug their shoulders and say, so what. In their minds they think, hey, at least the money is going towards SOME veterans, or a cause they think sounds like a good one.

You know how it goes.