The Daily Feather — Tastes Great! Less Filling!

A slogan for the ages! Long before there was anything “Ultra,” Miller launched the first low-calorie beer in 1973. Its slogan: “Tastes Great. Less Filling” catapulted Miller Light into the spotlight. In the prime of the campaign, television commercials portrayed a Lite Beer drinker noting its great taste countered by the retort that it was…less filling. This usually led to a parody of Wild West saloon fights where every patron got involved in the dispute for no reason. On the surface, light beer might not have appealed to the public. Marketers combated this perception with hyper-masculine personalities for dudes to “Show, Don’t Tell” that it was copasetic to drink light beer. The ads started to feature elite ex-athletes known for being rugged, badass, and against the grain such as Ray Nitschke, Ben Davidson, and Bubba Smith – with some oddballs thrown into the mix like comedian Rodney Dangerfield. So resonant was the 50-year-old ad campaign that even today, you can say simply “Taste Great…” to someone 40 years or older and they’ll finish off the phrase: “Less Filling!”

Over the past two trading days, November U.S. inflation data have a Miller Lite feel to them. Focusing on underlying measures that exclude volatile food and energy components, the core consumer price index (CPI) steadied at a 4.0% year-over-year (YoY) rate (orange line). Being two percentage points north of the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target, the hawks swatting away talk of rate cuts might say, “Tastes great.”