A new series of beer ads from Miller depict men talking about manhood rather than featuring comely blonds or party-hearty young men, the New York Times reported May 1.

Miller says the ads, featuring celebrities like football player Jerome Bettis, wrestler Triple H, and actor Burt Reynolds, will focus on men who "have defined in their own way what manhood is all about."

"They are true men," said Miller marketing head Erv Frederick. "They all have a lot of substance, and they have their own unique personal style."

The ads are staged like a roundtable discussion on topics like how to clink a beer glass and how long a man should wait before dating a friend's ex-girlfriend. Frederick said Miller "wanted to move beyond that stereotype of men as sophomoric."

"We're trying to position it as a smarter, more intelligent light beer," he said.

The ads represent a real departure for Miller, which in 2003 produced an ad showing two busty women fighting and tearing off each other's clothes over whether Miller Light "tastes great" or is "less filling."

"Beer is so tied in to male culture, and I think the tradition of sort of settling things over a beer and figuring out the world over beer is a strong one," said Alex Bogusky, CEO of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the ad agency that created the new ads. "It's one of the nicer aspects of beer, and it's one of the reasons that it's a powerful cultural beverage."

The campaign also features a website called Manlaws.com.

Alcohol industry critics were skeptical that Miller would truly change its ways. "This is the same thing we've heard after the Swedish bikini ad in 1991," said David H. Jernigan, the executive director at the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Georgetown University.