Be who you want to be - a drunk

Go to any AA meeting and you'll hear the same stories:

I was so anxious - I just didn't want to be anxious anymore
I just wanted to have more confidence
Alcohol made me feel like I was a better person

It's no coincidence that marketers tap into these same insecurities in order to sell booze. They know damn well why most people of a certain age reach for a drink in the first place. In my mind there's only two types of drinkers, and those two types of drinkers are typified by the two different types of vodka you can buy.

Young people like their alcohol to not taste like alcohol but at the same time be strong enough to get them absolutely hammered. They also don't want to pay too much for the privilege. So their drink of choice more often than not is fruit or pop flavoured vodka.

Easy enough, right? But how to sell vodka to the other type of drinker, the one who isn't necessarily looking to party the night away? Easy. Speak to that inner lack which drove them to drink in the first place. And that's just what this ad does - except it's aimed squarely at men.

I find the list of men that you can 'be' if you want to rather interesting:

• Mahatma Gandhi - nothing about inebriation speaks to me of non-violent resistance, except for when you're drunk and you finally pass out. That part is non-violent
• Sigmund Freud - drunk people don't have enough empathy to be able to see past the egos of other people - and their own egos become hopelessly inflated
• David Hasselhoff - this one is accurate. You can become a wreck of a man whose daughter films him drunkenly eating chicken off the kitchen floor if you drink enough
• Brad Pitt - again this is accurate. By drinking, you too can eradicate enough brain cells to get to the point where you match wits with Brad Pitt's
• James Bond - no... You drink and you can't jump from planes, ski down slopes whilst picking off enemy agents with your machine gun, etc. You need good hand-eye coordination and drinking reduces that
• John Rambo - yes. You can become John Rambo if you drink. In fact, most of us would need to
• Superman - no. Drinking does not give you superhuman strength - it just makes you think you have it

You'll note in the reflection that Sauron is mentioned...