Since I was a young lad growing up in my parents’ advertising agency, I was always struck by the fact that things would be cheaper if we didn’t spend money on advertising. The trouble is that consumers just don’t buy things that aren’t advertised.

The trouble is that we often come to believe that advertised differences are real. Sometimes, there are unique benefits for a product or service. More often, however, when we say our product “tastes better,” we are stating a subjective judgment.

Beer is a perfect example. Americans spend millions of dollars on what is, largely, lousy beer. Mass brewed American beers are fairly universally viewer as awful around the rest of the world.

Yet we buy 30 pack after 30 pack of the swill.

And the brands with the best advertising sell the most beer, newly Belgian “imports” Budweiser and Bud Light.

At the same time, most Bud Light drinkers would scoff at bargain priced brands, such as Miller High Life Light, Milwaukee’s Best Light, or Old Milwaukee Light.

If you had asked me yesterday, I would have submitted to you that the preferences for Bud Light, Miller Lite, or Coors Light over the three cheaper brands were created on Madison Avenue.

Those differences are not real. We spent millions of dollars putting them in your head.

These feelings were confimed yesterday when I ran across the 2008 World Beer Cup winners.

Who won the “Best American-Style Light Lager”? Surly it was one of the “big boys,” right?

Nope. Old Milwaukee Light.

When we strip off the logos and accompanying brand images that copwriters and art directors worked so hard to create, the cheap beer tasted better.

Sure, the ads are nonexistent or not nearly as clever. But blind judges who should know something about beer picked a beer from the bottom shelf.

Won’t my graduate students be surprised to see a refrigerator stocked with Old Milwaukee Light at the next lab party? Award-winning Old Milwaukee Light, that is.

The next time you’re sitting back enjoying a widely advertised packaged good, ask yourself whether that increase in quality is real. Maybe it is. And maybe an advertiser put that image there.

And I continue to believe in my heart and mind that long-term emotional connections beat out short-term ROI for the vast majority of consumer goods and services.

Then it’s no surprise that one of my favorite television of ads of 2009 came from Saatchi & Saatchi.

While reading the awesome Dec. 15, 2008, “Book of Tens” issue of Advertising Age, I came across 10 “Ads Garfield Loved.”

Although I don’t always agree with their rambunctious ad critic, his No. 3 choice, Miller High Life, is dead on:

The High Life delivery man is the arbiter of down-to-earth beer drinking. He’s angry, confused, joyous and charismatic all at once. In the baseball skybox, amid cheese-nibbling elites who aren’t even watching the game, he is transcendentally appalled.

In addition to being a funny commercial and a nice piece of storytelling, this ad is the brand. High Life is a lower-priced beer, and there is no benefit in shying away from it. Instead, this ad and the broader campaign embrace the everyman theme of an economical brew.

Frustrated that corporate America is pricing sporting events out of your range? So is the High Life delivery man.

The ad resonates, we make an emotional connection, and the magic of Roberts, Ogilvy, and Burnett happens.

Santa, please bring me more ads like this in 2009!