Heineken Wants Men to Know That Drinking Too Much Heineken Isn't Cool

If you're single, you probably know that dating advice can come from a lot of unlikely—and unwanted—sources. Your balding and guayabera-clad pharmacist, for example. Or your newly engaged father, who, thanks to a whirlwind courtship at a Sandals Resort, now thinks he is a steamier version of David Duchovny.

Well, get ready for your newest expert advisor on dating: Heineken. Yes, the 150-year-old Dutch beer company would like the gentlemen out there to know that ladies don't like men who get trashed. And the beer makers are putting 10 percent of their annual marketing budget into an advertising campaign that promotes this message. A TV ad, entitled "Moderate Drinkers Wanted" is about to air in 30 markets worldwide starting tomorrow.

The ad shows a number of beautiful but fed-up women asserting their need for men who aren't pathetic, wasted losers. The ladies strut through a city singing the 1984 Bonnie Tyler song "Holding Out for a Hero" (popularized by the movie Footloose​), as the music intones, "Where have all the good men gone?" and impossibly hot women do the Beyoncé strut through streets littered with drunken, passed-out dudes

Why would Heineken spend money on an ad that portrays drinking in such a, well, nasty and not-sexy manner?

The answer appears to be twofold. First of all, Heineken, like other alcohol-purveyors, devotes some of its advertising budget each year to "drink responsibly" messages. Although federal regulations do not require such messages, the beer and alcohol industry apparently has voluntary codes for such advertising. Despite this seemingly good intention, though, a recent study by Johns Hopkins shows that these responsibility messages largely end up promoting drinking and not the health benefits of laying off the stuff. This may be due to the advertisements' failure to actually detail what responsible drinking looks like.

The second reason Heineken appears to be running this ad is that a Heineken poll recently showed that 21-to-35-year-olds are actually concerned about controlling their drinking. The poll included 5,000 people in five countries, and found that 59 percent of Millennials say they don't want to lose control to alcohol. In addition, 36 percent say they've been shamed by appearing drunk in pictures on social media. That latter number seems to be an understatement, but maybe that's just us.

Agnieszka Gorecki, Heineken's communications manager, told Campaign: "We have observed this trend for moderation and the object of the campaign is to encourage it." In other words, you asked for it, you got it: people want to drink less, so Heineken is happy to tell its male customers that drinking less will help them pick up strong, in-control women who are ridiculously good-looking.

Does this all seem a tad sexist to you? Well, Heineken sees it differently. Gorecki says, "we wanted to use women as influencers. We believe that women play a strong role in men's lives and we began to think that they could help us make moderation more of an active choice."

Speaking to MUNCHIES, Heineken's Global Consumer Brand PR Manager David Pugh said that Heineken has run two previous campaigns—in 2011 and 2014—that advocated drinking moderately and responsibly. "With this new global campaign, we want to show the importance of staying in control and the benefits of not drinking to excess to both the individual and to those around them," Pugh told me via email. "Research shows that Heineken's consumers are starting to take heed of the moderation message. They are changing, but they need another push—from someone they care about."

The new advertisement ends on an upbeat note: a man charms a woman bartender when he turns down a second bottle of Heineken and actually leaves the bar appearing lucid and in an upright position. Success! Rock on, dude.

"The Moderate Drinkers Wanted campaign is deliberately bold. As a global beer brand we have an opportunity to create change by starting a 'moderation movement' where young adults can recognize that responsible drinking can lead to greater enjoyment of the moment," Pugh explained. "Our aim is to change perception so that drinking in moderation can become the cool option."

Thanks, Heineken. Now we know: stay awake and don't vomit in the bar. That's how you get the ladies.