Meme Monday - Good Friends You Can Count On

Welcome to another installment of, "Come ON -- tell me the WHOLE story!" AKA "I love to talk about myself", or "Me-Me Monday" for short. The object of the game is to refer to your 101 Things About Me list, pick one of your "things" and tell the whole sordid tale. (I don't yet have a full 101 Thing About Me list, but do plan on growing one. So when I play Me-Me Monday" I'll add to my list.)

46. I tend to be brand loyal to the point of annoyance. (Like when I used to sing the “Ex Says It All” song from the Molson Export commercials whenever hanging around with my good friends.

There’s this Molson Export television commercial from the 90’s based on the “Ex says it all” slogan that they’d used for a while that I loved to listen to and loved to sing (I still do when the mood catches me, maybe because I tend to always be surrounded by good friends I can count on. You see how they do that in their marketing -- they get me to associate good friends with a brand of beer. Pretty coy)

We always go the distance
Right up to the wall
Good friends you can count on
And a cold Ex says it all

There’s nothing halfway about it
It’s always been our call
There’s nothing halfway about it
Ex says it all

I’d always been a fan of Export. It possibly stems back to the fact that my father and my uncle used to usually buy either Molson Export or Molson Golden. I remember when they came to visit Ottawa this one time, my roommate and best buddy Steve and I bought a case of Export just for them.

I remember I’d continued to buy Ex to bring to parties because not many people were drinking it (it wasn’t cool with the University crowd at the time -- back then popular brands were Black Label, Miller Genuine Draft and Labatt Blue). That way it was difficult for people to steal our beer without us knowing it.

I remained loyal to Molson Export for a good many years, and it’s still often my default brand of choice. I remember being disappointed when I bought my Kegorator last year that Export didn’t make Kegs in 20 or 30 Litres, but only in the 50L size (which is too big for my refrigerator -- I currently have it filled with Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale).

In the past several years, however, particularly when Molson flipped from becoming a purely Canadian owned company (there is a phenomenal Molson family history of how the empire was built from the ground up) to a merger with the Adolf Coors company, my loyalties started to turn towards beers such as Moosehead and Hamilton’s Lakeport Brewery. It feels good to buy beer that supports a local business and employs people locally, and their Lakeport Honey Lager is a fine tasting beer (and still a remarkable $24 for a two-four. Wow.

So what I need to do, then, is come up with a nice catchy song that I can sell to the good people at Lakeport for use in their radio commercials. One that’s even catchier than the “Good Friends” Molson Ex song and incorporates their "Lakeport. Great Beer. Fair Prices." slogan. Yeah. Good idea.