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Promotion
With a mixture of savvy and humor, Guinness launched its first advertising campaign in 1928. The “Guinness is good for you” campaign leveraged the drink’s nourishing image and featured posters and ads by artists including John Gilroy. Later campaigns included “Guinness for Strength,” which humorously depicted ridiculous feats of strength; a talking toucan who acted as pitchman in their first TV ads in the 1950s; and the “Pure Genius” campaign in the late 1980s, which explored the beer’s mysterious qualities.
In 2004 Guinness launched its “Brilliant!” campaign to support its draught in bottles business. The $14 million campaign by BBDO uses photorealistic imagery and offbeat humor to portray two Irish brewers who have discovered the simple genius of putting GUINNESS® draught in a bottle. As one of the pair describes it, “I fill the bottle with authentic GUINNESS® draught. Then we walk outside . . . bring it to a party, then we drink it. Brilliant!”
A dependable measure of the brand’s success is its ability to leverage in the minds of consumers the brand’s association with Ireland. A new campaign urges consumers to “Treat St. Patrick’s Day like a real holiday.” Using Christmas morning as a metaphor, the humorous TV spot follows a group of grown men waking up on St. Patrick’s Day morning and running downstairs to discover a gift-wrapped keg surrounded by a variety of GUINNESS® products — all wrapped in green, of course.
Other U.S. promotional efforts include: GUINNESS® “Believer” — a consumer mentoring program centered on invitation-only events, sponsorship of the GUINNESS® Fleadh music festival from 1997 to 2000, and the 1759 Society, an online community that offers members first-hand information on what’s new with GUINNESS® as well as exclusives and sneak previews of upcoming ad campaigns.
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