The hard sell

Magners Irish Cider

You can be a hopeless dipsomaniac who defecates himself while waiting in line to buy a bottle of Teacher's at BuyBest. You can be a hopeless degenerate frantically licking the pub's vinyl floor in a desperate bid to imbibe some tiny trace of free alcohol. You can be a drunk driver who's just ploughed his speeding car into an orphanage while attempting to snort a tumbler full of gin through a straw. Just as long as you're Irish.

This is a golden rule of booze marketing. If you're English, Welsh or Scottish then heavy drinking is seedy, depressing and wrong. But if you're Irish it's somehow artistic and glamorous. Alcohol is what drives your burning Celtic soul. It helps you write poetry and informs your heartfelt political convictions. When we drink, we all pretend to be Irish in a bid to stave off the nagging emptiness in our souls. This explains the continued popularity of Guinness despite the fact that it tastes like Benylin mixed with Nescafé and Bovril. Damn it, if you're Irish, you can even get away with drinking cider!

Magners Irish Cider has proved irrefutably the marketing might of this cruel Irish stereotype. Had their beverage been called simply Magners Cider we'd have pigeonholed it just like every other brand of this glorified Appletize: as the preferred beverage of goths, bumpkins and murderers. But by inserting the word Irish they've made it this summer's booze du jour. They've tested the power of Irishness even further by promoting the drink with ads that are a real set of bastards. Some bloke in horrible slacks stands in an orchard examining an apple. Some men with neat haircuts swig pints of cider poured over ice.

A moody Oirish voiceover drools: "We could tell you it was all about craft, tradition and heritage - but we know it's all about the taste." Which is a lie. It's not about the taste. It's about pretending that you're James Joyce or Shane MacGowan and that you're getting pissed to reconcile your intense masculinity with your deeply romantic soul. Rather than the fact that you're a weak, pathetic booze-hound who despises every detail of your hellish, pub-bound existence.

Today's best video

Today in pictures

More from The hard sell

A comic view of a recent advert