Can You Be Annoyed Into Trying New Beer?

I often wonder when I'm watching TV what the point is of repeating the same commercials over and over during the same show. Certain on-demand channels take this to an extreme—ABC runs six or eight spots for the same (Disney (DIS), of course) movie during a single hour. If the fourth iteration of the spot hasn't persuaded us to go see the movie, do they really think the fifth one will?

Anheuser Busch-InBev's (ABI) plan to take up all the national commercial time on this week's Saturday Night Live for its new Bud Light Golden Wheat is a bit different in that it's obviously more of publicity stunt than it is an ad campaign (here I am writing about it—see?).

But still. To my way of thinking, as a person who is generally annoyed by commercials anyway, it seems to carry some risk. Repetition is irritating. Is that really the best way to introduce a product? (Update, Monday: I managed to catch the last hour of the show. The repetition of the ads was slightly less annoying than I had anticipated, but only slightly, and only because there were so many local and regional ads. Several of the actual spots were repeated at least once, and as a whole, they weren't particularly inventive. The campaign, like so many campaigns aimed at drinkers of mass-produced American beer, emphasizes the brew's "drinkability," which can be translated as "wateriness.")

The SNL ad buy is  "a way to make a statement," Keith Levy, AB's marketing chief, told Jeremiah McWilliams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

What statement is that? "If you think about Saturday Night Live, it’s obviously comedic, it’s fun, it’s young," Levy said. "Those are the things in particular that Bud Light Golden Wheat is trying to capture."

OK, young and fun I get—older people tend to develop better taste in beer and are outside of Bud Light's targeted demo. But comedic? Is the beer even worse than Bud Light, thus being a sort of joke on consumers?