Miller64 and advertising agency Mischief enlisted the help of world-renowned mathematician Ken Ono, Thomas Jefferson Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia, to determine if 64 is a smaller number than 80.
When asked in this commercial–directed by Julian Pugsley of production house Honor Society–to solve this particular equation, Ono maintains that 64 is less than 80.
Thus Miller64 is proven to be lighter than a certain competing light beer with 80 calories.
Seemingly this lesson is more revelatory for some than one might assume. A recent survey stumped 7% of respondents who thought 80 was a smaller number than 64.
Kevin Mulroy, executive creative director and partner at Mischief, said, “Nobody ever told you that in order to watch your calorie intake you’d have to do so much math. So we thought we could help by hiring one of the world’s most brilliant mathematicians to do that part for you. It turns out the slightly more difficult thing for a beer ad to solve is your relationship with truth or objective reality.”
Ono currently serves as the section chair for mathematics at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is an expert in number theory. He’s published over 200 research articles and was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering.
