Late Night With Red Stripe Beer

If BBDO’s wee-hour Red Stripe chicanery is any indication, late-night infomercials don’t have to suck.

Execs at the impecunious Diageo brand suggested doing a two-minute infomercial mainly because the buy would be cheap. They also knew their target demo is aware of post-midnight pitches for products like Bowflex (“That’s when 22-year-old guys are coming home from bars,” says BBDO ecd Gerry Graf). “The thought was, ‘We are a small brand. If we can’t outspend the competition, we’d try to out-think them,’ ” says Chris Parsons, marketing director for beer at Diageo.

To qualify for the time, the ad had to sell something (and presumably not just a six-pack that you can get at the corner store).