Surfing champ Mick Fanning jokes about sharks in Balter’s beer ad featuring diverse cast of Aussies
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The new ad for surf champion Mick Fanning’s beer brand goes completely diverse by featuring everyone from bowlers to immigrants as the star jokes about his famous brush with a shark.
- Balter Brewing Company released the announcement
- The campaign is called ‘We Love Good Beer’
- The ad celebrates a wide range of palates and people
Australian surfing champion Mick Fanning jokes about a shark attack while promoting his beer in a humorous new ad that celebrates diversity with faces from nearly every section of Australian society.
The Balter Brewing Company, founded in 2016 by Mick Fanning and surf champions Joel Parkinson, Josh Kerr and Bede Durbidge, launched the new campaign called ‘We Love Good Beer’ to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the brand’s XPA beer.
The ad is a show of diversity, featuring a wide range of beer drinkers, including older lawn bowlers, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and immigrants from a wide range of ethnicities.
Members of the large cast sing comic lines in a crowded pub before joining in to sing in unison, ‘Balter’s Beer Is For Everyone’.
Balter Brewing Company launched a new comic campaign called ‘We Love Good Beer’ featuring a diverse cast of beer drinkers from nearly every section of Australian society (pictured)
Mick Fanning stars in and jokes about sharks during the commercial’s musical number while raising his glass of beer.
“And for every time I don’t see a shark on the beach,” Fanning sings.
The 41-year-old’s joke refers to his famous encounter fighting a great white shark during the final round of the 2015 J-Bay Open surfing competition in South Africa.
Footage released by the World Surf League (WSL) showed the shark’s fin emerging from the water before following Fanning as she paddled out of the shallows.
The shark knocked Fanning off his board, which he tried to use as a shield to prevent the predator from biting him, before striking the shark in the back.
The three-time world champion is seen again at the end of the ad telling a fellow beer drinker, “I still love sharks.”
Balter Brewing co-founder Stirling ‘Stirls’ Howland said the ads are more like “extremely short documentaries” showcasing the diverse range of palates and people the beer brings together.
“Beer shares many qualities with a good host: both are approachable, thoughtful, and value character over currency,” Stirls wrote on the brand’s website.
Surfing champion Mick Fanning stars in the ad and jokes about his famous encounter with a great white shark
The shark knocked Fanning off his board during an event in South Africa in 2015, which he tried to use as a shield to prevent the predator from biting him, before striking the shark in the back (pictured)
‘Above all, both help unite a wide range of people.
“Seven years later, we’ve seen these core values come to life through a beer and brand that connects with a wide range of palates and people, and these new ads simply celebrate that.
“So they’re not really ads, they’re more like extremely short documentaries, and our hope is that everyone in Australia feels a sense of connection through good beer.”
The full announcement shared on the Balter Brewing YouTube channel has received over 57,000 views.
In 2019, beverage giant Carlton & United Breweries bought the Gold Coast-based craft beer company for an undisclosed amount.
Balter Brewing is understood to have sold for between $150 million and $200 million, giving Fanning a net profit of $4 million.