Possibly the Worst Beer Poster in the World…

Cisk is a good beer.  Let me start there.  I am a proud and enthusiastic consumer of the product.But someone in the marketing department really took their eye off the ball when they green-lighted this particular outdoor ad for Cisk.  Now I have searched for it on the internet without success – maybe somebody decided to quietly pull it from circulation? – but it appeared at bus stops for a period of time, and I managed to snap this elusive picture on the back of a delivery van in Sliema.  (Clarity not 100% perfect, due to embarrassment of photographer at taking snaps of the rear of a beer delivery van).

Just feast your eyes on this beauty…

Slogan: uninspired, but fair enough.  Let’s call it a ‘no frills’ effort. After all, Cisk certainly is Cisk.  There is no arguing with that.

Now first impression of the picture: okay, it’s a bunch of mates gathered for some social event and of course they are all drinking great big pints of Cisk because this is Malta and everybody likes Cisk.  However, there is something a little odd about this particular bunch: some of them have the strained fake-cheerful expressions of kidnap victims, and they are gathered around the short little fellah in the cap in a manner which suggests obligation rather than desire.

In fact, lets move in for a bit of a close up here and… wooooah there!   Exactly how old is that girl?  I know the legal drinking age is seventeen but she doesn’t look a whole lot older than twelve.  And in what universe are she and the bloke in the cloth cap hanging out in a pub swigging pins of Cisk!?!   Just what exactly is the nature of this relationship anyway, because I’ll tell you now I DO NOT LIKE the look in the cloth cap man’s eyes?  Meanwhile the dark-haired woman on the left (mother? older sister?) seems to be silently screaming ‘Just Keep Holding the Beer and Smiling – Maybe They’ll Let Us Live!!’

Or maybe they were all just photoshopped in, what do I know?

Good beer though.