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The Energizer Bunny. Wendy's ''Where's the beef?'' lady. Bud Light's ''I love you, man!'' dude. Welcome to the Mount Olympus of commercial icons. And if Budweiser has its way, that pantheon will soon include a brand-new god: Gus.
Featured in half a dozen quirky spots, the goofy 6'5'' delivery guy (played by stand-up Don McMillan, 37) will do anything for fresh beer: In one ad, he feverishly ices down a sunbaked car to cool off a forgotten bottle in the backseat; in another, as part of a SWAT team, he counsels a suicidal soul stuck on a fire escape with stale suds (''Put down the skunky beer...and slowly back away!'').
The $350,000-a-spot campaign (created by Goodby Silverstein and codeveloped by DDB Needham) premiered last spring as part of Bud's $40 million effort to publicize the freshness of its beer (bottles and cans now list packaging dates). Bud has been pumping Gus ever since and will be debuting spots throughout early '97, including during Super Bowl XXXI, TV's most coveted ad time. Heck, the company's wholesalers are even fitting their driver-salesmen with Gus bow ties.
An amiable oaf with near-obsessive tendencies may not seem an obvious choice to relay technical info (which is precisely Bud's intent) -- but it's working. ''If we had a straight spokesman up there, this stuff would have read like wallpaper,'' admits Bob Lachky, Anheuser-Busch VP of brand management. ''We needed a guy who was personable but also stuck out.'' And that, in a nutshell, is the mission in creating any winning ad character: Cut through the clutter, lodge in the brain. With Gus, ''his absurdity is his accessibility,'' observes Chuck McBride, an ad exec with rival agency Foote, Cone & Belding. ''It wasn't Pete Coors telling me how important fresh beer is.''
Snapping couch potatoes to attention isn't enough, however -- you must then drive them to drink. And herein lies the tricky part. Slippery car salesman Joe Isuzu, for example, ''was extremely humorous,'' notes TBWA Chiat/Day exec Pam Keehn, but he didn't move product. ''He wasn't effective because he represented the wrong thing for a car company: dishonesty.'' Gus, however, seems to be striking a keg with audiences: He tests among the company's most ad-fab campaigns (right up there with Spuds), there's been a healthy jump in sales, and McMillan is approaching celeb status. ''I'm signing lots of autographs,'' he chuckles. ''Somebody sent me a Heineken on an airplane, knowing who I was, but I told the flight attendant: 'I really can't drink that. Do you have a Budweiser?'''
Of course, as history proves, commercial fame can be as short-lived as a 12-pack in a frat house. ''Gus does have more flexibility because he's not a one-trick pony,'' notes Lachky. ''But he'll only stay as long as we keep it fresh.'' In other words, Gus, like beer, has a limited shelf life.
