Guinness has creamed some of the top awards in advertising, but once itdidn't need to advertise at all, writes Shane Hegarty
On this day in 1929, Guinness ran its first newspaper ad. "Guinness builds strong muscles," it proclaimed. "It feeds exhausted nerves. It enriches the blood . . . Guinness is one of the most nourishing beverages, richer in carbo-hydrates than a glass of milk."
It then summed all this up with memorable brevity: "Guinness is Good For You."
The company may not be able to make such a bold statement 75 years on, but there are few people today who wouldn't know the catchphrase. It was quite an effective début campaign.
Guinness ads, though, have had the canny knack of becoming iconic. John Gilroy's illustrations - the toucan perhaps the best known of them - have lived on in the décor of flat-pack Irish pubs. "Surfer", featuring a big surf of thundering horses, was voted best TV ad of all time by Channel 4 viewers. "Guinness Island" (with its "tá siad ag teacht" punchline) was Marketing magazine's Irish Ad of the Century.
Guinness spends about 300 million a year persuading us to drink its beer, but Tom Kinsella, head of advertising at Guinness/UDV, admits the ads have to be good too.
"There is a lot of pressure, because of a great heritage and reputation. You don't want to be the person to let that down," he says. "But it is a 360-degree reflection. Great ads reflect on the brand and a great brand reflects on the ad. Is it iconic because of the advertising or iconic because of the brand?"
Some have taken things further. The Royal College of Art in London has exhibited classic Gilroy ads, although not everyone believes that they belong in a gallery instead of on a billboard.
"No, it's not really art," says Trevor Jacobs, who lectures in advertising strategy at Dublin Institute of Technology. "It's doing an advertising job, which is to communicate a brand to a target audience, but I don't consider advertising to be an art form. Some might disagree with that, and maybe in 100 years time Guinness ads might be considered to be art in the way that Toulouse-Lautrec's work is considered art today."
Jacobs worked for Arks agency during the 1980s and 1990s, when it developed the "Island", the surfer-on-a-pint and man-dancing-around-a-pint ads and argues that it is its "uniqueness as a product that creates great advertising. The fact that it is so intrinsic to Irish culture also helps it along."
Guinness's first ad was used only in England, because the stout's dominance in Ireland was felt to render advertising unnecessary here. In recent decades, however, its campaigns have reflected the competition from lagers and alcopops, which have seen Irish sales decline. It has tried to persuade us that it is refreshing in the summer, that a cold pint isn't the heresy some might presume and that it is worth the few minutes wait. Many of these ads came from an English agency. In 2001, a BBC documentary followed the progress of the creators of the "Not Men, But Giants" campaign for the All-Ireland Hurling Championship as they visited Croke Park, sipped stout in a pub and then retired to London to discuss "the whole kind of displaced Irish thing".
"There is a contradiction in a sense," admits Kinsella. "However, you've got to go where you believe creativity is best. It certainly was a harder job for them to understand the Irish psyche and culture, but a lot of brands use foreign ad agencies now. And that an English agency cracked it is living proof that it can be done." Irish agency, BBDO, made the "Free-In" ad featuring a drenched hurler and a team of monsters, which was broadcast around the world, despite its obvious cultural constraints.
There may not be too many ads left to make, though. There is growing pressure within the EU for a ban on alcohol advertising, and the Government is considering putting health warnings on packaging. Already, alcohol advertising is subject to numerous restrictions: a minimum age for actors, no claims that it is good for your health or that it will make you more attractive. For a product that used Alice in Wonderland to sell stout, it has forced Guinness to think more laterally. The current "Believe" campaign, with its oblique message of self-belief, shows how far things have come.
"The ads have to be incredibly intelligent," says Kinsella. "There are lots of beer ads that are great and funny, but not intelligent. Guinness has a reputation for being both cerebral and entertaining. Besides, people are far more media-literate now and I think they enjoy decoding the ads." Some countries, though, are still home to an old-fashioned, and slightly distasteful, adherence to the direct messages. In Nigeria, where cold Guinness has proven a lot more welcome than in Ireland, the company recently produced a full-length movie featuring a James Bond-type character charming women while dispatching baddies and gulping stout. Entrance to the movie was free, as long as patrons bought a bottle of Guinness.