by Douglas
Messerli
Produced in 1995
by Ogilvy & Mather for Guinness Beer in the United Kingdom, this commercial
advertisement featuring the 1968 Country Western classic by Tammy Wynette, “Stand
by Your Man,” was made in support of the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The
black-and-white ad begins with an overview of an urban neighborhood in a
British city which immediately gives way to a gloved hand cleaning up—washing dishes,
tossing out cans, flushing the toilet, and rinsing away grime—with a rubber-gloved
hand as the song’s lyric laments “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman / Giving
all your love to just one man.” A handsome man in shown in the bathtub with a
huge yawn on his face.
As the lyrics continue “But if you love
him, you'll forgive him / Even though he's hard to understand,” the male figure
breaks off the front of a chest of drawers and evidently has left the sink
afloat with various bottles of shampoo and shaving lotion. He tosses his white
shirt vaguely in the direction of a hamper of other dirty clothes before putting
on a fresh one.
A quotation appears on the screen stating “Men
and Women shouldn’t live together. They are totally different animals,” attributed
to English singer and actor Diana Dors.
Our sloppy male hero, now dressed, races
down the stairs, a piece of toast in his mouth and a cup of coffee in his
hands, stopping only when another handsome man comes out of the house behind
him. He quickly gives the cute boy a kiss and rushes off to his car, putting
the coffee on the car roof as he drives off, the mug falling down over the trunk
of the car.
Another online slogan appears: “Not
everything in Black and White makes sense,” after which a glass of black and
white (often described as black and tan) beer circles before the camera.
This truly clever gay commercial received
according to Adweek such “massive negative backlash” that the ad was
immediately pulled by the company before even airing it.
According to Jim Edwards, writing in Business
Insider once the press heard about the upcoming advertisement, the company denied
it even existed. In 2010 it was finally uploaded to YouTube and received
hundreds of thousands of views.
Although the company attempted to suggest
there was ambiguity about the commercial as to whether the men where gay, it is
quite apparent that they were a couple even before gay marriage became legal in
Britain in 2014.
It’s too bad Guinness didn’t have the gumption
to “stand by their ad,” a true classic of commercial advertising.
Los Angeles,
January 1, 2026
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema (January 2026)
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