Advertising: Is That All There Is?

The controversy was more familiar to Americans than the Lincoln-Douglas debates. For 17 years, argumentative ex-athletes wrestled with the weighty question of whether they drank Miller Lite beer because it “Tastes great!” or is “Less filling!” The ad campaign created a vast demand for low-calorie brews at a time when Miller Lite was virtually the only supply — in 1975 it constituted 96% of light-beer sales. However, the 1980s produced challenges from Coors Light and Bud Light, which drained Miller’s share to 33%.

Miller Lite will counterattack this week by abandoning the taste-vs.- calories contretemps in favor of a new slogan. “It’s It. And That’s That,” goes the Zen-like outpouring of pronouns. The campaign is the creation of Chicago’s Leo Burnett agency, which landed the $110 million Lite account in March, muscling aside Manhattan’s Backer Spielvogel Bates. The new theme, pitched particularly to women and younger drinkers, seems to imply that Lite has supplanted traditional brew as the real thing. In one Lite-hearted spot, a delivery truck is seen losing the first and last letters of the product’s name, leaving behind only “it.”