The Most Interesting Man in the World

About

The Most Interesting Man In The World is an image macro series based on an advertising campaign for Dos Equis beer. The captions typically follow the phrasal template “I don’t always X, but when I do, I Y.”

Origin

The advertising campaign was created by the global marketing firm Euro RSCG Worldwide.^[2] The ads starred American actor Jonathan Goldsmith^[3] as “the most interesting man” with narration by Will Lyman^[4], best known for his narrating role in the public affairs TV program Frontline. Goldsmith’s character is known for his catchphrases “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis,” and “Stay thirsty, my friends.”

The ads first aired in the United States in 2006 and were uploaded to the wistl1976 YouTube^[15] channel on April 10th, 2007. The same month, the promotional website StayThirstyMyFriends.com^[6] was launched, where fans could upload videos of themselves performing toasts with a bottle of Dos Equis.

Spread

On November 18th, 2007, the advertising news blog Advertising 305^[7] published a post about the ads, calling the campaign “a stroke of genius.” On December 9th, Time Magazine^[8] listed Dos Equiis as a top TV ad of 2007. On April 24th, 2008, a thread was posted about the campaign on the Texas Longhorns enthusiast HornsFans^[16] forums, in which forum member wolfman compared Goldsmith’s character to the martial artist Chuck Norris.

On May 25th, 2009, the news blog Slate^[10] published an article, claiming the ads took “aesthetic cues” from the work of film director Wes Anderson. On June 4th, the food blog Eat Me Daily^[5] posted about the campaign, remarking that the character had its own Twitter-impersonator (the Twitter^[17] account has since been deleted). On July 2nd, People Magazine^[11] interviewed Jonathan Goldsmith, who revealed he lived on a 47-foot boat in California. An archived 4chan^[19] post with racist versions of the Goldsmith character dates back to August 3rd. The Internet Wayback Machine’s^[18] first snapshot of the Meme Generator^[1] page for “Most Interesting Man in the World” was taken on November 22nd. The page allowed users to created image macros using a photo of the Goldsmith as the Dos Equis man. In January of 2010, a Quickmeme page for “The Most Interesting Man in the World” was created, in which the first image macro was captioned with “I don’t masturbate often / but when I do, I use women.”

On February 11th, Vitamin Water began a parody campaign called “The Most Ridiculous Man in the World” featuring Canadian basketball player Steve Nash. In the videos, Nash is portrayed as a bizarre character who says the catchphrase “I don’t always drink water, but when I do, it’s Vitamin Water” and “Stay vitaminized, my friends.”

As of April 10th, 2012, a Quickmeme^[13] page has over 96,000 submissions and a Facebook^[14] page has received over 243,000 likes.

Notable Images

Notable Videos

Search Interest

External References