John Madden, who died last week at the age of 85, has been rightly acknowledged for his impact on the game of football, on broadcasting and on the enormous gaming franchise that bears his name.

Tossed into the stories on Madden’s life was a brief reference to him as a Miller Lite “pitchman.” He was much more than that. Madden was part of a creative revolution that changed beer advertising. He helped establish the burgeoning light beer category and created a multi-billion-dollar brand along the way.

Celebrities had been doing beer endorsements for decades. The creative was exactly that, a simple endorsement featuring uninspired concepts and celebrities whose delivery might best be described as wooden. We’re in a cycle now where it seems every client in every category wants a celebrity in their work. A good deal of that work could also be described the same way.

It’s part of the age-old conundrum around using celebrities. They’re so tempting because they can elevate an idea and make it sparkle.  But the process of creating the right idea and getting the right person for it is extremely difficult. Many celebrities are hired by brands but few actually embody the brands they represent. Sam Elliott for Coors. Ed McMahon for Budweiser. Madden for Miller Lite. I may be leaving a name off but it’s a very short list.

You may wonder why there’s not more recent celebrity work that qualifies as great. The beer business moved away from that type of creative and the category is poorer for it.

Madden’s passion for football came from a genuine love of the game. He was a fan with a coach’s mind who knew the intricacies of every play and a coach with a fan’s exuberance for wanting every play to succeed. There was nothing uninspired or wooden about him.

He was in many ways the ultimate beer guy and that passion would make him an ideal personality for advertising provided the right concept came along.    

Truly successful beer campaigns drive growth for five, 10 or even 15 years while building strong brand imagery and emotions. They have target insights and differentiated benefits and powerful creative ideas that play across media and are brilliantly executed.

But that’s not all. There’s one point that elevates potentially great ideas into the stratosphere and this is where Madden excelled.

The most powerful enticement in beer marketing is the idea of the “me I want to be”—an idealized state of mind attached to the experience of holding the brand that encapsulates how the consumer feels about themselves and how they would like others to see them.

For years, marketing folks deluded themselves into thinking beer consumers aspired to be models, so the creative work should feature physically attractive but vapid people having fake fun.

The ad agency Backer and Spielvogel changed that with their phenomenally successful “Tastes Great/Less Filling” Miller Lite campaign. Backer created a world where average consumers were invited into a place where the most famous ex-athletes and personalities were telling jokes, exchanging classic one-liners and buying beers for their friends—and you could pull up a chair and laugh along with them.

You were rewarded for your time because you left with a funny line or a story to use with your friends so you looked forward to the next time you were invited to laugh at Miller Lite’s truly great copy.  

For almost a decade and across what seemed like a dozen executions, Madden was “the me I wanted to be.” Great timing, classic delivery and always in charge of his surroundings even when he was breaking through walls “Hey Kool-Aid” style. Madden helped legitimize light beer. He was a big star among a pantheon of big stars featured in Miller Lite creative.     

The NFL talks about coaching trees, meaning all the coaches who once worked under legends like Bill Parcells or Bill Walsh.

I’d argue there’s an advertising creative tree with numerous Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite and Corona ideas that would not have existed without the Madden Miller Lite work from Backer.

It would be a mistake to not acknowledge the Miller Lite clients who bought that great work. Lots of great ideas make it into the room but unless a brave client says “let’s go produce that one,” nothing happens.

I spent the early 1980s tending bar in a college tavern almost under the El tracks on the North Side of Chicago. Each night I heard lines from the advertising bantered around the room by people drinking Miller Lite. They’d order beers from me using lines from the advertising and quiz each other as to who delivered which line.

It was a group of college students borrowing and internalizing lines from ads with 40- and 50-year-old men because those ads embodied the “me I want to be”— and Madden was at the front of that line. Though he’d blanch over the preciousness of the title, Madden was an influencer of the highest level decades before we knew what that meant.

Coach Madden, you’ll be missed by generations who discovered the good humor and self-deprecating nature that made your beer advertising worth watching and your beer brand worth buying. BOOM.