Barman, this beer ad is flat

WHERE have all those dreadful Guinness commercials gone? You know the ones, with the stage Irishman wittering on about the "secret of the "Big Pint". These incredibly annoying ads seem to, have dropped off our screens very quickly, which suggests that public reaction was resoundingly negative. From "Ta siad ag teacht" to "The Dancing Man", Guinness ads have been a significant part of Irish popular culture over the last three decades, but they've never got it so wrong as this before.

In the world of Irish advertising, Guinness is the biggest prize of all, not just because of its huge budgets but also because of its status as a national symbol. There was considerable newspaper coverage last year when the company moved its account to a British agency, so there's a degree of Schadenfreude in the Irish advertising industry now that the new campaign appears to have fallen flat on its face, but it's only a drop in the ocean of the company's huge advertising spend. Who now remembers last year's campaign, the "Not Everything in Black and White Makes Sense" series? Or those bizarre surrealist images of boats falling out of planes? The most fondly remembered Guinness ad of recent years was "The Dancing Man", which was conceived and produced as a low-budget filler separate from the main campaign of the time. "The Dancing Man" was an example of how beer commercials have been getting "quirkier", but as the "Big Pint" ads demonstrate, quirkiness can go horribly wrong.

Broadcasting regulations on the depiction of alcohol have forced advertisers to adopt all kinds of strange, elliptical strategies to persuade us to drink their products. Irish regulations forbid the depiction of people under 25 in beer ads. In addition, you can't show more than five people drinking beer on screen, and you certainly can't imply that your product is likely to get anyone merry. The rules in Northern Ireland are less stringent, as can be seen from the Bass commercials in which a bunch of guys and gals sit around cracking jokes, lashing back pints and, worst of all, buying rounds (a strict no-no in the Republic). There's always a danger in character-driven commercials however, - you may turn off more people than you attract. Who on earth would want to go out for a pint with the idiotic Jack Nicholson fan in the Bass ad, or the joker with the jackass laugh in the current Smithwicks campaign?

Different audiences can read the same commercial in diametrically opposed ways. For an international audience, Caffrey's "emigrant" ads (essentially a souped-up revamp of the old Sally O'Brien idea) serve to link the product with a dreamy vision - of Celtic mysticism, but a young Irish audience sees them as an attractive depiction of a New York lifestyle, playing pool in a noisy bar with House of Pain blasting out in the background - the real dream of most young Irish people, after all.

The dirty little fact nobody in the industry will publicly admit is that, in the lager market particularly, the prime target is teenage drinkers who haven't yet decided which brand of fizzy yellow stuff they should order. Until a couple of years ago, the standard approach was to show a gaggle of well-groomed twentysomethngs living the yuppie high life - typical, old-fashioned aspirational stuff. Recently, though, the ads have been getting more diverse.

If you're trying to target the youth market, but can't show the product doing what it's supposed to do, why not imply the presence of an entirely different stimulant? More and more advertising employs the imagery of 1990s drug culture to sell alcoholic products. The controversial alcopops started the trend, but, the recent Ritz ad gets around the five people rule in an ingenious way - nobody is seen drinking, but they seem to be having a suspicious good time. As club culture seeps into the popular mainstream, and the generation that grew up with raves and ecstasy becomes the new wave of advertising "creatives", we can expect to see more of this kind of stuff.

Modern post-production technology allows for all kinds of manipulation of the image, making it easier to achieve that hallucinogenic look. The current "Heineken Connects" ads, with their "avocados parascending" through a sequence of saturated greens, provide a highly surrealistic vision of flatland life, a long way from the leisurewear smoothies who used to populate Heineken ads.

IT'S quite possible, though, that all this clever knowingness, while it may pick up awards, doesn't actually persuade anyone to buy the product. In the relatively small Irish advertising industry, beer commercials provide the chance to wok with large budgets and big ideas, and can easily lead to self-indulgence. "The Dancing Man was hugely popular, but it didn't sell any more Guinness," says one industry insider.

The suspicion is that Guinness drinkers gravitate towards the pint of plain of their own accord, and that the only function of advertising is to keep them feeling comfortable about it. Traditionally, that has meant dreamy, semi-abstract swirls of blacks and creams not men in clown suits telling unfunny jokes. Perhaps it's time to get back to basics, even if you're not allowed say "Guinness is Good for You" any more.