Life advice from a brewery.

There are two new commercials you need to watch. Seriously. This campaign is brilliant.

The campaign is for the Kona Brewing Co., a Hawaii-based beer company*. I have tried their beers, and they are really delicious, so they get one point for a good product. The spots feature two archetypical characters, the instantly-likeable slackers. That’s two points in their favor. And they were shot on location in Hawaii using locals. Three points! But the best thing about these commercials is their message.

The gist of the first spot is this: Why do mainlanders have happy hour? Why not have 23 hours of happy and 1 sad hour? Okay, they’re selling beer, so if you take this at face value, the implied suggestion is that you drink 23 hours every day. Fun! Just kidding. Kids, stay in school. However, if you take it less literally, it actually makes a lot of sense. Try to spend more time being happy. Sounds too simple, but it’s not a bad lesson to come away with.

The message from the second spot is equally silly and sage: Stop multi-tasking and spend some time single-tasking. Again, the single task they’re suggesting you accomplish is drinking their beer. But there’s a good, solid life lesson in here, too. I took this to mean instead of being so constantly distracted by everything we have to do, we should take time to be really present for the good stuff.

I’m sure they’re not intended to be deep, but they made me feel good, and I hope they do the same for you.

“One life, right? Don’t blow it. Mahalo.”

*In the interest of full disclosure, the reason Kona Brewing could afford to hire an agency like Duncan/Channon is because they are now a subsidiary of the Craft Brew Alliance, which is a partially-owned subsidiary of AB InBev. Having spent nearly my whole life working in big business, I don’t believe that devalues the message at all. I take my life lessons where I find them!