Look, we've all seen some truly cursed advertising. Desperate brands will seemingly do anything to shove their product into your eyeballs, even if it means interrupting your favorite show at the worst possible moment. But back in 2003, down in Chile, one beer company took things to a whole new, frankly unhinged, level. Forget commercial breaks; Cerveza Cristal, owned by the Chilean beverage behemoth Compañía de las Cervecerías Unidas (CCU), decided the best way to sell lager during the Star Wars trilogy was to literally splice their ads into the damn movies. Yes, you read that right. They Force-fed beer into the galaxy far, far away.
Imagine settling in to watch A New Hope on Canal 13, Chile's public broadcaster. You're deep in the deserts of Tatooine. Old Ben Kenobi, wise and mysterious, tells Luke Skywalker, "Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough." He reaches into a dusty old chest to reveal... not a lightsaber, but an ice-cold bottle of Cristal beer. A jaunty jingle plays. The Cristal logo flashes. Then, maybe, you get an actual commercial break, or maybe the movie just snaps back into place, leaving you wondering if you accidentally ingested something stronger than Aunt Beru's blue milk. This wasn't a fever dream; this was Chilean television.
DIY Death Star Marketing
The most batshit part of this whole saga? These ads were made for about ten bucks. No, seriously. According to The Guardian, the director, Ignacio González, shot the 10-second clips in a literal storage closet with a handheld Canon XL1 camera. González, working for production company Efex!, would look for moments in the film where characters reached for something or gazed at something off-screen. Then he'd film a hand (dressed in similar clothing) grabbing a Cristal beer, or opening a cooler full of frosty bottles.
"I never touched or intervened with the film itself," González told The Guardian. Instead, he created these seamless transitions that made it appear as if the characters themselves were reaching for a refreshing Cerveza Cristal. In one particularly inspired bit from The Empire Strikes Back, Luke pauses his Jedi training on Dagobah to grab a beer conveniently nestled in the swamp. In Return of the Jedi, even Emperor Palpatine gets in on the action, using the Dark Side of the Force to levitate a can into his wrinkled hand.
The campaign, officially called "Stop the Zapping," was designed to prevent viewers from channel-surfing during commercial breaks. Denise da Fonseca Dreyer, who handled marketing at CCU at the time, explained the problem: "The objective was to stand out during the ad break. They were long, sometimes there'd be 15 commercials." Their solution? Don't give viewers a chance to zap away by making the ads feel like part of the movie.
The Empire Strikes Back (Legally)
The campaign was a massive hit in Chile. It was so successful that CCU expanded the concept to other films broadcast on Canal 13, including American Beauty, Gladiator, and Notting Hill. Imagine Maximus in the Colosseum, bloodied and victorious, reaching for a Cristal instead of picking up sand. Or Hugh Grant stammering his way through a declaration of love before cracking open a cold one. The campaign, later renamed "Breaking Zapping," won a slew of advertising awards, including the coveted Media Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity — the first time a Chilean company had ever received this honor.
But you know who wasn't amused by all this? George Lucas and Lucasfilm.
As Ad Age noted at the time, this campaign, which blurred the line between content and commercials, probably couldn't air in the United States "without invoking the fury of George Lucas." And fury there was. By September 2004, Lucasfilm had filed a complaint with Chile's Council for Self-Regulation and Advertising Ethics (CONAR), arguing that the ads violated copyright and the Chilean Code of Advertising Ethics.
Lucasfilm's beef was twofold: first, viewers might "erroneously believe that the film includes a reference to the product," and second, the company "expressly refuses any association with alcoholic beverages" given the films' popularity with young audiences. CCU's defense? That the complaint underestimated the "intelligence of the Chilean television viewer." Bold strategy.
CONAR ultimately ruled in Lucasfilm's favor, though they did clarify that CCU hadn't technically infringed on copyright law. Still, the council found the campaign guilty of "exploiting the goodwill" of Lucasfilm "without authorization" and prohibited any further use. The party was over, and the Force was no longer with Cristal Beer.
A Disturbance in the Force (of the Internet)
For nearly two decades, these bizarre ads remained a weird footnote in advertising history, known mainly to Chileans and advertising nerds. Then, in March 2024, clips of the campaign surfaced online and promptly broke the internet. The videos went viral on X (formerly Twitter), with even Elon Musk sharing them. Mark Hamill himself weighed in, tweeting: "Is this now considered Star Wars canon in Chile?"
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert featured the ads, with Colbert ending his monologue by holding up a bottle of Cristal beer while playing the original jingle. The internet, doing what it does best, spawned countless parodies, with people creating their own versions for other films like The Lord of the Rings, Seven, and Dune. Imagine Paul Atreides pausing his desert training to enjoy the refreshing taste of Cristal beer. The spice must flow, but so must the lager.
Despite the renewed attention, Felipe Saráh Tornero, Cristal's current marketing manager, told The Guardian that the brand hasn't seen an uptick in sales. Cristal is only sold in Chile, after all. But the company is considering launching internationally — though Saráh Tornero assured everyone they "won't do any more film interventions." Probably wise, given how the last one ended.
The Legacy Lives On
What makes this campaign so fascinating isn't just its audacity — though splicing ads directly into Star Wars is certainly ballsy — but how it represents a weird moment in advertising history that couldn't exist today. In our current era of streaming services, social media, and hyper-vigilant IP protection, no one would get away with this. The lawyers would descend before the first beer cap was popped.
Yet there's something almost charming about the low-budget ingenuity of it all. González and his team, armed with just a camera and some ice-cold beers, managed to create something that would eventually captivate the world — even if it took 20 years and a social media revolution to do it.
Vladimir Fuentes, who worked on the campaign as an account supervisor at media agency OMD, summed it up: "We didn't have any bad intentions by appropriating the look and feel of the film, we only wanted to stand out during the ad break."
Mission accomplished, Vladimir. Mission accomplished.
So the next time you're watching Star Wars and Obi-Wan Kenobi reaches for that lightsaber, just remember: in an alternate Chilean universe, he's actually grabbing a beer. And honestly? After dealing with Anakin Skywalker, he probably needed one.