shots 159: G is for Guinness

An enviable back catalogue of award-winning advertising has secured its status as an iconic brand, but as its fruitful partnership with BBDO is given a global extension and stunning creative work emerges from as far afield as Asia and Africa, there’s more to Guinness than past glories, discovers Selena Schleh

In the business of advertising, it helps to have a unique product. And when it comes to beers, this Irish stout is one of a kind. It’s got the looks: those inky-hued depths; that lusciously creamy head; the perfect interplay of black and white. And then there’s the (allegedly) health-boosting properties of its iron and mineral-rich formula: back in the 1920s, the brand built an entire campaign on the notion that ‘Guinness Is Good For You’. Heck, even the thumb-twiddlingly long time it takes to pour, surge and settle was a ten-year cause for celebration under the slogan ‘Good Things Come To Those Who Wait’.

That particular strapline came courtesy of London agency AMV BBDO. Out of all the creative shops that have worked with the brand since the glory days of S.H. Benson (remember the toucans?), it’s AMV – which won the account from Ogilvy & Mather in 1998 – that’s produced Guinness’s greatest hits. From Swimblack to noitulovE and Tipping Point, this glut of creativity has won hearts and minds – 1999’s Surfer was voted ‘best ad of all time’ in a 2002 Channel 4/Sunday Times poll – and swept the boards at international awards shows.

According to Mark Sandys, Diageo’s global head of beer and Baileys – who cut his teeth at Diageo on the Guinness brand as a marketing trainee back in 1997 – the success of the partnership, like a good marriage, is all down to common goals, shared understanding and longevity. “I have always felt that the agency ‘gets’ Guinness. They have the same aspiration for great and distinctive work, they challenge us to push ourselves further creatively and they also act as guardians of the brand for us and for our other agency partners. The long-term nature of the relationship really matters and has created a culture between us that has lasted even as the people working on the brand evolve.” Michael Pring, managing partner at AMVBBDO and worldwide account lead on Guinness agrees: “Our relationship has been longstanding but we earn it every single day.”

Such an enviable heritage can be daunting to follow – as Nadja Lossgott and Nicholas Hulley, the art director/copywriter team behind last year’s Sapeurs advert found out: “It’s the brief you want to get, but when you do get it, there’s a hell of a lot to live up to – which is scary.” It’s also a huge incentive to raise the bar creatively. “Working for Guinness brings a great sense of responsibility to live up to the work that has created this iconic brand – that is the most powerful standard to judge our work against,” says Sandys.

So what’s the secret to Guinness’s success? Sandys states firmly that, unlike the precise mix of barley, hops, water and trademarked strain of brewer’s yeast that goes into making the beer, there’s no magic recipe for its ads. “We have a clear understanding of what the Guinness brand stands for – an inspiration to make bolder choices – and also the personality of the brand, but there is no prescribed formula.”

Still, there are some constants underpinning the brand’s communications. “Guinness is unique, and so we look for creative ideas that only Guinness could or would do,” explains Pring. “Ideas with soul and substance that people can unite around, always executed with that Guinness character and twinkle in the eye. We have a very clear sense of brand purpose, to inspire people to bolder choices, and that is in the DNA of all Guinness work.”

“Throughout the years, Guinness has constantly reinvented itself with innovative firsts and groundbreaking work,” adds Sandys. “It’s important to remember this so that our role is to continually bring change and reinvention, rather than resting on our heritage.”

One current challenge is unifying the brand message across markets that range from Ireland to Nigeria. “Guinness is a global brand, much more so than people realise, but perhaps it hasn’t been as consistent and joined-up strategically or creatively as it could have been,” reflects Pring. That’s all changing in the wake of last year’s global review, when BBDO assumed creative responsibility for Guinness’s advertising business in western Europe, north America, Asia and Africa, taking over from the incumbent Saatchi & Saatchi. Consolidating its advertising under one network has allowed the brand to expand its ‘Made of More’ tagline – originally developed by AMVBBDO for the UK and Irish markets – to the rest of the world.

While ‘Made of More’ might not be as memorable as its predecessors (who could forget earlier gems such as ‘My Goodness, My Guinness’?) it

has more global relevance. ‘Good Things Come To Those Who Wait’, for example, only really works in relation to the ‘long pour’ of draught Guinness; drinkers of the beer’s export variant, Foreign Extra Stout, which accounts for over 40 per cent of total Guinness sales worldwide, don’t have to hang around for a ‘surge and settle’. And ‘Made of More’ is a tagline with greater scope for regional variations that add greater local relevance – or what Pring calls “taking a global concept and dipping it in local paint”.

“The way in which ‘Made of More’ comes to life varies massively depending on whether you are in Lagos, Seoul or Cork,” elaborates Sandys. “BBDO has allowed the creative executions to flourish within the framework of a consistent positioning.”

Sapeurs, created by AMV BBDO for Guinness Europe, is a case in point: a feel-good bit of branded content exploring the kooky subculture of the sapeurs, or Society of Elegant Persons of the Congo, blue collar workers who choose to cock a snook at life’s harsh realities by peacocking around in a magnificent array of glad rags. “They’re just normal people looking to live their lives with dignity and joy,” elaborates Hulley. “How they do it, however, is pretty unique and visual.”   

The work dominated at international awards shows, and though some criticised Guinness for lacking a true connection to the story (as well as the agency’s decision to enlist a stylist and to shoot in South Africa, rather than Brazzaville), the decision to feature the sapeurs themselves added sincerity. “Once we decided to tell the story of the sapeurs we were adamant we had to use the real guys: for authenticity and credibility we knew we couldn’t use actors,” says Lossgott. That drive for authenticity was why the team also pushed to make the accompanying documentary. 

Across the pond, meanwhile, BBDO New York has taken a more heartstring-tugging approach with two recent spots, Basketball and Empty Chair, celebrating the values of friendship and loyalty. But, as agency senior creative director Tom Kraemer points out, emotional advertising is a tricky thing to get right: “The biggest challenge was to strike an emotional chord without coming off as false or cloying.” 

With its story of a six-strong wheelchair basketball team, five of whom, in a tear-jerking reveal, turn out to be able-bodied but playing to support their wheelchair-user friend, Basketball could easily have veered into exploitative or condescending territory. It was therefore crucial the participants had a real connection with each other, and with the sport, explains Kraemer: “The protagonist was a disabled athlete who plays wheelchair basketball competitively, and [director] Noam Murro had the men practise a lot together so they could build a genuine camaraderie that you felt on screen. Also, one of the able-bodied players is the coach of a wheelchair team. All this contributed to the gritty authenticity of the commercial.”

Last year’s Fourth of July offering, Empty Chair, packs a similarly emotional punch: a bartender repeatedly places a pint of the black stuff in front of a vacant seat – whether in tribute or as a sign of hope is uncertain – until finally, one day, the bar door opens and a returning soldier takes up his rightful place… and his pint. The spot strikes a gently patriotic, rather than mawkish note, embodying the tagline: ‘The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character’.

‘Made of More’ is raising the creative bar in regions beyond the traditional Guinness heartlands. “We’re as proud of the work we do in Africa and Asia as we are of the work we do in the US, Great Britain and Ireland,” says Pring. Take last year’s multiple Lion-winning poster campaign from BBDO Singapore, which builds on the brand’s strong print heritage. Created to convince Singaporeans that cracking open a bottle of draught Guinness is the same as pulling it from the pump, Draught In A Bottle uses just a few artful strokes of the pen to give the illusion of a pint in a bottle. It’s the kind of retro-chic advertising that you’d happily rip out of a magazine, frame and hang on your wall.

Africa has been a significant market for Extra Foreign Stout since 1827, and over 40 per cent of Guinness in terms of total volume worldwide is brewed and sold there. But until recently the beer was seen as a drink for older consumers, reflected in very traditional advertising, such as Saatchi & Saatchi’s 1999-2006 campaign, featuring Michael Power, an African James Bond-type who saves the day with the catchphrase ‘Guinness gives you power!’ Tasked with introducing Guinness to a new generation, AMVBBDO and BBDO Africa decided to shake things up. The result, Made Of Black, exploded onto screens last year as part of a five-hour takeover of MTV Base. Featuring a host of local African artists in a quick-paced montage of performance art, dance and set pieces, interspersed with statements like ‘Black is not a colour. Black is an attitude’ and backed by Kanye West’s rebellious anthem Black Skinhead, the two-minute spot marked a daring, even provocative departure for the brand. “It was a very unconventional script for a client to buy, especially for the African market,” admit Ant Nelson and Mike Sutherland, the art director and copywriter responsible. “Unlike most traditional beer ads, it didn’t have a linear storyline with a beginning, middle and end and it didn’t feature guys drinking in a bar. There isn’t a pub or drinking shot in sight.”

But this wasn’t about creating controversy for controversy’s sake, rather it was about reflecting a huge cultural shift going on in the region. “Africa has the most brash and exciting youth culture in the world,” says Sutherland. “[It’s] comparable to Brooklyn in the early 80s: an energetic, scatter-gun and unstoppable culture shifting in its infancy to something else which demands attention.”

In short, this new audience is not, as The Guardian once memorably put it, ‘twinkly-eyed, Byronic bar-room intellectuals, sitting quietly with a pint and dreaming of poetry and impossibly lovely redheads running barefoot across the peat’. “Tonally it’s a move on from where the brand was in Africa, but it’s the right thing to do,” Pring states. And it’s certainly been the right decision from an awards perspective, with the campaign picking up a gold Lion in Film at Cannes this year.

Despite the complex production of the spot, it was based around a simple insight, says Sutherland. “Guinness is the world’s blackest beer; no other beer looks like it. It’s unique and proud to be black. This attitude is shared with the youth of Africa – they want to stand out from the crowd and they’re proud to be different.”

What about the all-important touchstone of authenticity? In a similar vein to the approach on Sapeurs, the team insisted on casting ‘real’ people rather than actors, or overexposed celebrities, spending eight months scouring Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast for original emerging talent.

With ‘Made of More’, Guinness looks set for a new chapter of creative landmarks. And that’s definitely worth raising a pint to.