Imagine you are a simple, traditional beer with a strange name. You don't have double bock. You aren't traditionally pure from bavaria. You certainly don't contain any ginseng or acai berry. You aren't the most popular in America or the cheapest. What to do?

In this case, the idea is not to say 'all your friends are doing it' because the obvious counter is ... 'and they look like idiots! why would I want to be them?' or 'I already do this.' The idea is to say that someone who has tried anything and has all the options open to him has a preference. Someone who leads a varied lifestyle includes this in his lifestyle. Someone you look up to, perhaps, or at least hope to be eventually. How many people have tried 'shaken, not stirred' just because they wondered what would result? What could be so compelling that it was written into the character of James Bond as a signature element? James Bond smokes Havanas. We can't, legally, but we know that if we could, it would be the top thing to do. James Bond orders the best champagne. We can't afford it... but when we can, we would follow his lead on choices of brand and year. If James Bond had been written drinking a certain kind of beer, that would have been money in the bank for that brand, forever. As it is, Martini and Rossi must love him.

Since "the most interesting man in the world" stole both my look and my resume', I guess I'm entitled to respond...

The ad works for the same reason that the "Canadian Club"/"Your dad was not a 'metrosexual'" series of ads work. The progressive neutering of the American male which started in the 1960's has created a generation of young men (in the target market demographic) whose own fathers, if not absentee dads, were feckless or ineffectual, leaving them with no real role models to emulate. Both the "most interesting man" and the "Your dad" commercials have stepped into void thus created, offering up a (fictional, if compelling) role model. These are men to be emulated. This is what you want to be like. This is how you succeed in the world (with money, with women, with whatever). Even the tag line, "I don't always drink beer, but when I do..." works. It's a superb soft-sell because what's being sold is not the product, beer, but the image of successful maleness. Despite the usual beer ads, every guy knows that drinking Bud or Miller or Coors is not gonna make gorgeous women fall all over him (or improve the quality of his tailoring) but every guy wants to believe that there is a "type" he can exploit and adopt which will (and that "type" prefers Dos Equis).

The ad is unique and funny but it does have one technical flaw. I am the most interesting man in the world! Drink responsibly for your health my friends!!

I largely agree that what is successful for most men in this present age, and what is actually a model of masculinity, are quite different. Hence the need for a fictional role model; actual successful people are so darned risk adverse, or the lucky young (think the google entrepreneurs), or the bizarrely gifted savants... the 'most interesting man in the world' seems attainable and desirable.