The time has come for advertisements to outshine each other for the Superbowl but Budweiser is taking another route for Superbowl 2016 by teaming up with Dame Helen Mirren for a Public Service Announcement (PSA) against drunk-driving.
The PSA, released on Feb. 2, is part of Budweiser's #GiveADamn movement which calls out drivers to protect the lives of others and their own lives by not driving while intoxicated.
Of course, that doesn't mean Budweiser wants people to get stranded wherever they drank. As part of the movement, the brewing company will spend $1 on safe ride programs for every use of the #GiveADamn hashtag and offers intoxicated drivers the opportunity to find a ride by typing in the zipcode of their location in the campaign website. That's not all, because Budweiser also partnered with Twitter to create a branded emoji for the campaign.
The PSA begins with a waiter serving Mirren a bottle of Budweiser to pair with a delicious looking juicy hamburger. Mirren then introduces herself and proceeds to tell how dumbfounded and collective we are that drunk-driving is still something people do.
"If you drive drunk, you, simply put, are a short-sighted, utterly useless, oxygen-wasting human form of pollution... A Darwin Award deserving selfish coward," Mirren says in her notoriously frank demeanor. She also adds that if a drunk driver donates his or brain to science, science would undoubtedly return the brain, which would prove how useless it is.
Drunk drivers would probably need an ice-cold bottle of Budweiser to nurse that burn. Make that an ice-cold, but empty bottle so they have something to collect their tears too.
Budweiser has taken the words out of Mirren's mouth in the pledge it offers on its website.
"We want this spot to really cut through and create conversation about drunken driving," Budweiser's Vice President of Marketing Brian Perkins said.
Watch Mirren delivers those lines herself in the video below.
