The advertisement entitled "The Iron Horse," for example, introduces John Jameson -- the founder of the brand -- as a man turned mythical figure.
The tone of the commercial is one of a story being related not unlike Jack and the Giant Beanstalk or other fairy tales children are familiar with. In the ad, Jameson stops a runaway train dubbed an 'iron horse' and attempts to save its precious cargo which viewers are led to be believe are the beautiful women aboard the train but he quickly rides past them on his horse and jumps onto the car housing his whiskey. Jameson then throws the engineer off the locomotive and onto the horse and uncouples the locomotive from the whiskey and women. The locomotive, still barreling out of control, goes off the tracks and destroys a Prussian naval vessel which the narrator remarks was part of an armada to take over Ireland and that the reason nobody has heard of it is because of Jameson's doing.
Jameson Whiskey, The Iron Horse
Therefore, the advertisement strays from the typical alcohol-related advertisements. There are no young people in clubs (that is not the image the brand has cultivated), there are no sentimental stories based around the brand's history a la Jim Beam or Jack Daniel's. Instead, the ad creates a mythology around its figure as a larger-than-life figure.
In another ad titled "The Hawk of Achill" a giant hawk takes a barrel of Jameson's whiskey and so he hides in a barrel in order to lure the hawk into taking it. The giant bird takes the bait and Jameson ends up in its nest and finds a local girl the hawk had taken prior. The ad jumps to Jameson kissing the hand of the woman he had saved while standing victoriously next to a giant plate on which the now-cooked bird rested. This ad also plays on the mythical aspect of John Jameson and continues to separate itself from other alcoholic beverage advertisements by using a mix of mythology, humor, and hyperbole.
Jameson Whiskey, The Hawk of Achill
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