Ever noticed that you’ve never seen a Costco television commercial? Or a Costco ad in a magazine or newspaper? Or even a lovelorn billboard, pointing you to great deals at low prices from a quiet highway?
That’s because Costco doesn’t need to advertise. Part of its success, as one of the largest retailers in the world, is the lack of necessity to spend on an ad budget.
But that all changed (not actually) when Randy Colpek, a man with a drinking problem and a camera, decided to make a “commercial” for Kirkland Light Beer.
The make-believe TV ad is clearly satirical—we hope—and sometimes goes too far, like with the all-too-obvious wife-make-me-dinner bits (men: those are never funny, even if you are kidding).
At the same time, it’s honest. It would appear this man and his drinking buddies really put in the time and effort to drink dozens of cases of Kirkland Light—enough to build a wall of cardboard boxes in the backyard—not to mention the additional time put into shooting and editing the video, which includes setting up the same shot many times (too many). We tend to agree with reddit user, requesticles, who notes, “There’s something nostalgic about this.”
The video allegedly contains the “outtakes,” but we have a feeling there was no full “commercial” cut.
“We had a blast just goofin off,” Colpek says in the comment thread of his post on Reddit, which has now gained enough traction that it’s actually labeled as an ad. “We had so much fun, and honestly it was just about the laughs we had that day. I took a couple months to get around to editing it and it was just for our friends on Facebook. Folks liked it so here it is on Reddit.”
Colpek also introduces some intel that could be a joke, but is mostly a little bit sad: He says he drinks 18 Kirkland Light beers a day, five days a week, on average, and adds his mental health is “surprisingly good,” despite being dealt a difficult hand in life (the details were originally included in the comment thread, but have since been deleted, since the post got so popular).
Nevertheless, the “ad” harkens back to a time when internet videos were simple, stupid, and a shining product of American men with too much time on their hands. Give it a whirl. As for the beer, we can’t vouch for Kirkland Light, but the Kirkland Variety Pack is not bad.
