How Creative Heritage Drives Success for Brands like Guinness

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“I always remember the first piece of advertising I ever commented on,” says Sir John Hegarty. “I was about eight and I saw a Guinness poster. It said, 'Down with Guinness'.” He was perplexed, so went to his father, a Guinness drinker. His dad duly explained the joke about downing pints. “That sort of playfulness was there from the beginning,” says the advertising legend, remembering posters featuring toucans and quirky slogans. 

Today, that playfulness remains in Guinness’ marketing, but in a more 2024 flavour. Look at the singing pints “holding out for a zero” in last year’s St. Patrick’s Day spot or the beer’s most recent film to coincide with the stout’s Premier League sponsorship – a cheeky portrait of how playfulness and community show up wherever you find humanity.

“A brand is made not just by the people who buy it, but also by the people who know about it,” says John. “I don't buy Guinness. I don't like it.” His honesty prompts a laugh from AMV BBDO chief creative officers Nicholas Hulley and Nadja Lossgott, who work on the beer brand’s advertising. But John doesn’t need to like the drink himself. “I respect it,” he says.

And which person in advertising doesn’t? You don’t have to ask many for their favourite ad before the Jonathan Glazer-directed ‘Surfer’ comes up – the second execution around the immortal line that AMV BBDO wrote when the agency won the account in 1996: ‘Good Things Come to Those Who Wait’. At LBB this St. Patrick’s Day, we even paid homage to the creative heritage of the brand ourselves, putting together a collection of some of the Irish stout’s most iconic advertising.

The advertising heritage of Guinness feels almost universally lauded. Nick attributes that to the structure upon which all of its marketing is built. “That's the foundation that we all work towards: the three pillars of power, goodness and communion,” he says. “This is a product for people to come together. This is a product that doesn't have a cynical, mean-spirited view of the world, that has goodness and attached to it, and its power is its character, its charisma. Over time, what each of those pillars is doing is answering that question for its time, tweaking the definition of power, adapting the meaning of goodness, redefining what communion looks like. It doesn't just remain in an old pub. That's what is constantly changing.”

Thanks to that strong character persisting and evolving over the decades, even centuries, it’s not just ad nerds that love Guinness. So does the world. In December 2022, Guinness was named 'Britain's Favourite Pint' as it was the top beer brand by value share in the on-trade (bars, restaurants, hotels, music venues etc), as that year sales of Guinness in the UK and Ireland grew 22%. One in nine pints of beer sold in the UK is of the black stuff. Beyond Europe, Guinness has famously proven extremely popular across Africa since entering West Africa in the early 19th century, with Nigeria in particular embracing the stout. 

This year’s IPA Effectiveness Awards Shortlist contains the paper ‘Guinness, Diageo by AMV BBDO: How Guinness supercharged growth in GB and Ireland’ and in 2020 the brand won Gold and Best Multi-Market for ‘Guinness Made of More 2012-2019: Consistency x creativity’. If you go back through the years you’ll see the brand is a regular fixture, demonstrating how its consistently marketing does the job.

How do we explain that success? And what is it about building a heritage through creativity that makes such a world-beating brand? “What heritage gives you is fame,” says John. “It gives you an understanding, a shorthand in the decision making process. You don't buy things from people you don't know.”

“Heritage [...] allows premium pricing because you're famous,” continues John. “And it resists competitive pressure. Fame is so important, because it attracts energy, and life is about energy. If a brand has energy then people respond. That's what heritage offers you, [but] only if you constantly re-express it in an interesting, distinctive, relevant way or inspirational way. Just because a brand has been around a long time doesn't mean that it's of value. But it gives you an opportunity that you then have to explore. Heritage gives you the opportunity to develop your fame.”

Nick adds that the value of creative heritage comes from its ability to weave a brand into the fabric of human life. “It's not having to restart and invent fame from scratch. It's those icons that shortcut your decision making. With heritage comes recognizability.” 

When it comes to Guinness, the black and white of the product grants it a certain iconic nature. “Anyone can draw a Guinness with a black pen – even with a blue pen – and know exactly what brand it is,” says Nadja. “That is what you use time and time again. It's an incredibly lucky brand that it is iconic, in how it looks.”

Creative heritage is what builds the ideas around the pint of Guinness, but it’s not just about image. In a world of programmatic and programmable advertising that’s measurable in the short term, Nick posits that we often forget that people don’t start researching car brands the moment their old one gets written off. “I want that car because I knew about that car 20 years ago when I was a kid dreaming,” he says. “It's not just who's going to buy it, but who's going to admire it, because you have more than just the moment [of purchase] to decide. That's what heritage gives you. And that short-term measurability that we're addicted to ignores the fame that great brands are built on.”

‘Good Things Come to Those Who Wait’ is the ultimate example of taking a negative and reframing it as a positive, but if you think that endline is the crux of Guinness’ success, you’re probably British. Because that line wouldn’t work in every market where people drink it. “I think what makes Guinness one of the iconic creative brands is that it is a global brand, and everybody thinks it's their own brand,” says Nick. In the UK, waiting is a big deal, because so much Guinness is poured in busy pubs where other drinks arrive much more quickly. In Ireland, the wait has never been a problem, because so many people are drinking Guinness that it’s the default wait time. In West Africa, where three of Guinness’ five breweries are located to cater to demand, the norm is to drink from a bottle, making the concept of waiting for a draft pint seem alien. “'Good Things Come to Those who Wait' is very strong for the UK. It’s never had the same relevance and resonance in the rest of the world,” says Nick.

Enter 'Made of More', the more global line which has been applied globally since 2012. “Who doesn't adore 'Good things come to those who wait'?” asks Nadja. “It is a fantastic demonstration of a product that is taking a negative and turning it into the world's best positive and has exploded in creativity from that. That's certainly not up for debate.” But not everything rests on an endline for Guinness. “I think that what's interesting is the creation of the brand as a personality has superseded everything,” she says.

For Guinness, neither ‘Good Things Come to Those Who Wait’, nor ‘Made of More’ need to be present for an ad to be effective. But the spirit of the brand must be. Interestingly, in 2021, the old endline made a reprise. “Since 1959 they've been advertising draft beer. And then when it came to the pandemic, no one could get the beer,” says Nadja. “The pint that you picture in your mind and we'd been pushing the whole time suddenly disappeared. The strategy of choosing how to come out of the pandemic is part of their success now, because it was the only pint you couldn't really get how you want it with your mates in the pandemic. So their whole strategy with 'Welcome Back' was to ask ‘what's that first pint that you're going to drink?’ It's going to be Guinness.”

Creative heritage like this is there for an agency to draw on when circumstances demand a response because it’s a brand that’s always had a high regard for advertising. In the 1920s, Rupert Guinness, a descendant of the founder, once said: "The quality of our advertising must be equal to the quality of the beer." 

That strikes legendary ad man John as common sense. “More people will experience your product through your advertising than through the product itself,” he says, “so it's a good belief system to have that your advertising should be as good as your product.”

Thankfully Guinness and parent company Diageo agrees, and believes in the power of great marketing as something of a given. But, as Nick explains, “there are lots of people that you can work with who simply don't believe in it. They're just spending enough money, doing enough to just show the product. And Diageo are people who believe, whatever else comes after, in the power of a good story, well told.”

Part of Guinness’ creative heritage shows up in its products too. Looking at the advertising that continues the brand’s character while updating it for today’s landscape, you’ll notice it often promoting Guinness 0.0, its non-alcoholic version of the stout, which Nadja calls the company’s “biggest invention since inventing Guinness.” It’s the UK’s biggest alcohol free beer today. “I think that that is testament to them as a company, to keep innovating,” she adds. 

That drive for product innovation is welcomed by creatives who are trying to build effective marketing. John remembers sitting in meetings with clients back when he was in an ad agency, hearing about problems with sales. Sometimes they suggested short-term marketing solutions. “And I'd always be sitting there thinking, have you ever thought about making a better product? It's probably not going to be productive to say that now.”

“When you're working with marketing people, they think all the solutions are marketing. And they're not. Sometimes you need to make a non-alcoholic Guinness that is so good people go ‘bloody hell this is fantastic’. And all of a sudden, you're ahead of the game. Innovation is fundamentally important.”

Guinness has innovated in its marketing to match its product. While 0.0 opens up to drinkers who don’t want alcohol, the rich fabric of the brand’s creative heritage is being rewoven into styles that suit more kinds of drinkers. Look around a bar today and you’ll see Guinness drinkers who might not match your preconceptions – many of them will be women, for a start. Nick says this has been very conscious. “Opening it up and being a lot freer has turbocharged sales,” he says.

John might not drink it, but he recognises the unique aura around the drink. “It's not just a beer. There's a ritual around it. And that ritual you've gone back to celebrating,” he says. Search for how people are discussing Guinness on social media and you’ll see a lot more than the patience and hushed reverence it once demanded for 210 seconds. “People are tilting it now, and people are blowing into it, and people are splitting the G. There's so much more activity and rituals, playfulness, around it,” says Nick.

Nadja admits that the creative is encouraging that playfulness. “Rather than shooting the drink from above, where it's unattainable, you'll see that it's shot a lot more straight on. It's a lot lighter, and it's a lot more playful and social. It's just become more open and playful in a social space – creating new rituals with the pint that are for now.”

‘Down with Guinness’ then? Like John’s dad, you might be partial to downing one the old-fashioned way, but while the beer’s playful character hasn’t changed, it’s always evolved to meet the culture of the time. Guinness’ global success is ‘Made of More’ than just good Irish stout. It has always rested on creativity that’s been fought for from within and without the brewery.

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