Remember Coors Light’s Iconic “And Twins” Commercials?

Now this is when beer commercials were beer commercials…

On one hand, it make sense why brands started tailoring their message to a more universal audience; If you can persuade people from a larger demographic group to try your product, you’ll probably make more money (so long as you keep your original demo in the process). But on the other hand, there’s something to be said for honing a message down to a specific group of people and just dominating that segment, which Coors Light did back in the day with their series of commercials that became widely known as the “Twins” commercials and I’m not talking about the Minnesota baseball team.

Back in 2001, Aaron Evanson and John Godsey came up with an idea that would capture the hearts of men and the ire of (some) women across this country. They were working for the advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding and were asked to come up with new advertising ideas for Coors Light and the instructions were extremely simple: Come up with something that resonated with early to mid 20’s men and incorporate music.

Well, they ran with that and came up with one of the most unique advertising campaigns in history.

Using an old Tom T. Hall song, “I Love,” as the basis for the commercial, they swapped out words to match what young beer drinking dudes were into at the time (and still are, let’s be honest).

Godsey told the Seattle Times:

“It was an old country hit. “I love little baby ducks / Old pickup trucks / Slow moving trains / And rain / And I love you too.’ I was like, ‘What if we change the words?”

They changed “baby ducks” and “pickup trucks” for “Football on TV” and “Shots of Gena Lee” (For some reason I have an urge to rewatch Baywatch…) and then just kept rolling with it.

“Hanging with my friends… AND TWINS”

Here’s the first, and most legendary, commercial titled “Love Songs”:

I. LOVE. BURRITOS AT 4 AM

Sorry, it’s just plain old fun to yell… Plus, they actually got Baywatch star Gena Lee to make an appearance in the video. And of course this is where identical twins Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski became known by the masses.

They followed that ad up with a football centered one, but again, all anyone could talk about was the twins…

Naturally, while many dudes absolutely loved these ads and probably spent a ton of cash on cases of Coors Light, it received a lot of backlash as well. It was voted the most misogynist ad by some group and was brought up when Pete Coors, then chairman for Coors Brewing Company, ran for Senate as a Republican.

But overall, the memories of these ads are positive because men like the simplicity and women are grateful that someone parodied their dumb boyfriends or husbands…

I’m kind of surprised that Bud Light didn’t buy the rights for these ads during their whole controversy but I guess bringing in Shane Gillis and partnering with the UFC and NFL is the modern day version of these ads. Though I think you could make something like this now and it would go absolutely violently viral and bring in enough money that it would be worth the Huffington Post editorial headaches…

Coors, let’s bring these back, shall we?