Most ad agencies that work with alcohol brands have a general loathing for the myriad guidelines that shackle them from showing much of anything, including someone drinking a beer.

But in its new work for Heineken Light, Wieden + Kennedy New York decided to just make that the whole point of the ads, an approach that would probably come off entirely flat if the agency hadn’t also tapped a spokesman as charismatic as Neil Patrick Harris.

In the brand’s new :60, the Emmy- and Tony-winning actor spends most of the spot debating with the director about why he can’t drink a beer in a beer commercial. The repartee builds from there, with Harris floating increasingly implausible solutions such as pouring a Heineken into an empty Heineken Light bottle and then drinking it. (I’m not sure I follow his logic, but I admire it.)

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