Miller High Life is doing an end run around Bud Light on Sunday with Fort Worth native Windell Middlebrooks starring in what could be America's shortest TV commercial ever televised.
Blocked by Budweiser's exclusive deal with Super Bowl XLIII, MillerCoors is buying up airtime in one-second increments on local NBC affiliates carrying the game, said Julian Green, a MillerCoors spokesman.
It follows through on a spot last year of Middlebrooks critiquing Super Bowl ads in his increasingly famous role as a Miller delivery guy with little patience for phonies and snobs.
Green won't say exactly how much MillerCoors is paying to round up roughly 70 percent of the viewing audience market by market, allowing only that it’s far less than the $3 million Bud is paying for each of its nine 30-second spots.
That works out to $100,000 a second for Budweiser, now owned by the Brazilian-Belgian giant, Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Significantly, Miller High Life is garnering barrels of free publicity from the one-second campaign conceived by the brewer and its ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi.
The story of the second-long ad caught the attention of Advertising Age magazine, USA Today and other publications.
Read the complete story at star-telegram.com