Have you seen the recent Guinness marketing video? A significant change in the Guinness marketing strategy we believe. The strategy is using simple storytelling to gain our attention. Refreshing.
Let’s examine this video and strategy and what contributes to their strengths and weaknesses. We want to evaluate if it has the ability to influence and persuade with its storytelling.
Everyone hates TV commercials, and this is a well-known fact amongst the people who make TV commercials. Fortunately, a few brands and ad agencies are turning things around with genuine, heartfelt storytelling marketing. Guinness is trying to become one of these brands.
First, some comments about the video. Here is a link to the video to refresh you or for you to review in case you haven’t seen it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au8Y98Rgxbk
As you can see, this Guinness ad veers away from the clichéd beer model and creates its own: beer-drinking, manly men that can be both strong and sensitive.
It also creates an impactful and unique message promoting qualities like dedication, loyalty, and friendship:
The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character.
Guinness is no stranger to effective video marketing. This new video reached three million views within four days of online release. A simple plot; a game of wheelchair basketball followed by a pint of Guinness.
The twist is that only one of the men in the group is an actual wheelchair user – the rest, it seems, are his friends who are playing wheelchair basketball so that they can all play together.
In marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. This video certainly achieves this goal, don’t you think?
Let’s evaluate other keys to this video and storytelling marketing strategy:
Be relevant to your target market
Keep in mind that one message does not fit all. It starts with knowing your target market. Here the target market is young adults with a high focus on maturity.
It focuses on the traits of friendship and sharing happiness. This video is certainly relevant to this market.
Define your positioning
The positioning of your business is your frame of reference. Make comparisons to your competitors if you can.
Not only does this ad do a great job of building a beautiful story, it positions Guinness as a different kind of beer brand. By taking the opportunity to break the mold, Guinness stands apart from a pool of brands targeting the stereotypical girl-chasing, party-loving man-child. Guinness is much more than that and we like it.
Guinness certainly knows who its major competitors are and but chooses to not take them on in this video. A good move we believe.
The Guinness goal is to hold the audience’s attention with interesting information. Keep in mind that people don’t watch ads … they watch what interests them. Your ad messages must be interesting to your target communities. This message certainly grabs and holds attention based on simple emotion.
Define a value proposition
The value proposition should truly discriminate you from your competition. Give your customers reasons to select you. Maybe not the most significant visible feature, it does illustrate Guinness as a company that puts high priority on caring, which is their clear objective.
Make your messages simple
Simple messages that the reader will quickly understand are the goal. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words. Videos, well, they do even better than pictures. Creating customer emotion does not get any simpler than this, does it?
This video from Guinness flips the switch by presenting a group of athletic, beer-drinking men who are defined as much by their kindness as their physical strength.
The spot’s “Made of More” message is refreshing, memorable, and heartwarming—acting as a breath of fresh air within the beer industry.
Consider the end state values to your customers
Guinness’s marketing strategy has flipped traditional beer advertising on its head by getting rid of the template and telling a story – a real story – that connects with people.
The responses were overwhelmingly positive… customers and particularly the target customers are looking for meaningful stories. The marketing strategy certainly is addressing this end state in our opinion.
There are no better means of influence or persuasion than emotion. It is hands down the best, in our opinion. The video focuses on emotional appeal in a grand fashion.
They are saying that people who drink Guinness are decent people who are good to the core. This advert scores 10/10 for the emotional engagement factor. It is the secret of this video’s message and story’s success.
“For the most part, [beer commercials] depict men as unfeeling doofuses who only want to hook up with hot women and watch sports without being bothered by their wives.
… Guinness flips the switch by presenting a group of athletic, beer-drinking men who are defined as much by their kindness as their physical strength.”
The reason I admire this spot so much is simple: it’s different, thoughtful, and has an unexpected ending. While many beer advertisements rely on slapstick humor, an overkill of masculinity, and a simple message, “drink our beer,” this one takes a different approach.
It is both effective and creative. The spot’s “Made of More” message is refreshing, memorable, and heartwarming—acting as a breath of fresh air within the beer industry.
Guinness has definitely taken advantage of this open opportunity in the beer marketplace—and they are doing it with style and class.
After looking over these enablers, we believe Guinness has created a very effective commercial. What do you think? Does this video story persuade you?
What are some of your experiences with advertising as a component of an integrated marketing campaign?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your advertising designs.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
More reading on advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
The secret to the iphone5 TV ads …Effective Apple Marketing Strategy?
Another Effective Marketing Strategy for the Samsung Galaxy S4?
Do You Know the 9 Keys to Create Effective Advertisements?
Do you make continuous improvement a focus of your marketing strategy? Most of the best marketing strategies we study and follow certainly do, and that is an awesome way to do marketing. Yes, the innovative Guinness creative marketing strategies are making their messages better and better all the while. And their success has a ton to do with their marketing strategy. Of course, if you are a family that likes good beer you certainly know this.
Marketers tend to like big, bold actions that grab attention and spew off metrics and the March on Washington would definitely qualify as that. Yet, all too often, we ignore the more mundane work that comes before. To market a product or an idea, you have to change minds and that’s the real lesson of the Civil Rights Movement. Marketers need to learn from it.
While establishing a differentiated meaning for a brand is tough, perhaps the greater challenge facing marketers today is the growing number of places consumers touch a brand. It’s become incredibly more complicated to execute a brand promise. This is what we call bringing the brand to life.
Get started with this short video on creative marketing tips.
Consumers are interacting with brands in myriad new ways, but brand organizations have to move much faster. They have to show greater agility and responsiveness to potential followers actions and reactions. This often must be at warp-speed in this rapidly changing environment.
Guinness class
One of my favorite types of marketing is the “aspirational” kind — or as the Harvard Business Review defines it, marketing for brands that “fall into the upper-right quadrant.” Think Luxury cars, haute couture, and private jets. Things we aspire to own.
It’s that last one — private jets — that set apart the Guinness Class experience. For a few weeks, ambassadors dressed in Guinness-branded flight attendant uniforms entered bars across the U.K., where they surprised unsuspecting customers with a chance to win all kinds of prizes.
To participate, bar-goers had to order a pint of Guinness. After doing that, they would shake a prize-generating mobile tablet that displayed what they won. They could win everything from passport cases to key chains, but one player per night would get the ultimate prize: A free trip to Dublin — via private jet, of course — with four mates.
What we like about this experience was its ability to associate Guinness with something aspirational, like traveling by private jet. And according to Nick Britton, marketing manager for Guinness Western Europe, that held the brand up as one that doesn’t “settle for the ordinary.”
That’s important — and can be tricky — for a brand that’s nearly 257 years old: to maintain its authenticity, while also adapting to a changing landscape and audience. But Guinness didn’t have to change anything about its actual products in this case. Instead, it created an experience that addressed changing consumer preferences — for example, the fact that 78% of millennials would rather spend money on a memorable experience or event than buy desirable things.
Remember this
Think about the things your target audience might aspire to, and that you’d like to associate with your brand. Then, build an experience around that.
If you do require a product purchase to participate in the experience, make it convenient. In this case, people had to buy a pint of Guinness to win a prize, but they were already in a bar that served it.
I had heard that what some call the “Guinness Factory Tour” in Dublin was great. Its real name, the Guinness Storehouse, is the largest tourist attraction in Ireland. That is amazing.
In 2015, it was selected “Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction” at the World Travel Awards. Double amazing. Though visitors can glimpse at the factory buildings, it’s not a tour of the factory.
It is really about a GUINNESS brand experience, a wonderful melding of history and fresh, new, engaging technology, that takes place in a 7-story building dating back to 1904. The structure simulates the inside of a beer bottle, so large; it would take over 14.3 million pints of Guinness to fill it.
On the ground floor, is a collection of antique, single-serve beer bottles, attractively displayed, from the days when bottles were filled from large kegs at individual bars.
On the next level are framed portraits of the founder, Arthur Guinness and key contemporaries that come to life through animation, and explain the role beer and Guinness have played in Irish culture and Dublin history. Guinness so believed in the quality of his beer; he had the amazing foresight to sign a 9,000-year lease on the property for a mere 45 British pounds annually.
Another level shows how beer kegs were made and then rolled onto large ships and transported to progressively wider geographies around the world.
One level down from the top is three restaurants, with beautiful exposed white ceramic, Victorian period, glazed bricks from the original factory. One features contemporary Irish food with recommended beer pairings. Another is more of a pub, with pub fare, and the third, simulate the factory cafeteria, Guinness workers would have eaten in.
Last but not least, visitors wind their way to the top “Gravity Bar,” with its 360° views of Dublin, where visitors can enjoy a pint. “Gravity” is a double-entendre. While in the beer industry it means measuring the sugar in the wort (the starchy liquid that gets fermented), most visitors assume the name relates to its height. It’s “the highest bar” in Dublin. Imaginatively, at each viewpoint, etched in the windows are the names of the site’s visitors are looking toward.
Unique marketing ideas … web site
The Guinness web site is the physical center of this firm’s marketing. Their designs are very user-friendly, yet contain the means to integrate all the strategy elements we discuss today. They encompass several ways to allow two-way client engagements, including live chat, email, and telephone.
Again little to no selling, as they let their products do the marketing. Their strategy reflects the belief that pushy sales pitches turn customers off, but personally relevant and interactive engagement switches them on. You can’t help but notice that all the material is put into the language of the client community.
It’s the stories
The story is king – Guinness has figured out that the story was a great way to create customer attention. Many Guinness ads have a story behind them. People relate to these stories. It’s just part of the human condition. They are great for engaging people on a human level. Their stories abound at every turn.
Creative marketing campaign ideas … adapting to change
Guinness marketing is continually focusing on creative change A very progressive company which keeps up to speed on consumer trends and needs. Certainly always eager to adapt their expertise to new areas. And certainly always looking to try new things, to include marketing.
Social media
Guinness utilizes all the main social media channels/platforms to engage potential clients. All channels are used to engage and conversationally share all their material. They are always looking to engage and learn and serve customers.
Most all of Guinness marketing messages are short and to the point. As we said previously, many topics are used to produce many messages so as not to over saturate the market with the same ideas.
Integrating the elements
All of these strategy elements complement the firm’s brand and messages. The integrating elements? The brand and the client educational element. The key is to have a central theme to the brand. In Guinness’ case, the themes are all built around a creative brand identity. Integration of all elements is the most important part of the strategy.
The bottom line
Guinness has been created in many ways. The technological prowess is storied, but it was the marketing genius that set him apart from everyone else. Use a little of Guinness’ business insight in your content marketing campaign and enjoy renewed and continuous business success.
Here’s the thing, the Guinness creative marketing isn’t just a new way of attracting customers, it’s a new way of running a business. They certainly understand this concept well and are using social marketing to promote their business rapidly.
For a different way of marketing see our article on Marriott Marketing.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
11 Steps to Media Framing Messages for Optimum Engagement
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Walt Disney once said: If you can dream it, you can do it. Can you dream? Have you noticed that the world of marketing is changing? A big cliché, yes? Yes, it is, but it is having a significant impact. And the change is rapid. Traditional media vehicles are losing effectiveness as people communicate in new and different ways. Here we will illustratelearning from the best marketing strategycase studies.
Marketing strategy case studies
Mass audiences are fragmenting into small segments. Developing a point of difference is harder than ever. It takes a lot of creativeness, but it is certainly doable.
Research by the Content Marketing Institute estimates that 90% of consumer marketers are investing in content. Unfortunately, most of those efforts will fail. In order to succeed, marketers will have to learn to think like publishers. That will mean more than a change in tactics or even strategy, but a starkly different perspective.
And Guinness marketing has adapted and come up with some cool new marketing ideas. This new ad from Guinness proves that beer commercials can be so much more than guys and bars.
“Empty Chair,” tells the story of a bartender who leaves a pint of Guinness at an empty table every night amongst birthday celebrations and sports team’s victories. No one sits at the table, and the woman shoots a dirty look to anyone she catches eyeing one of the empty chairs.
Without fail, the frosted glass is there each and every night. It’s a powerful image that serves as a sign of hope for the bartender. But we aren’t exactly sure who the beer is for until the very end. Everything comes together when a soldier finally returns home to claim his Guinness.
The spot finishes with the tagline “The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character.”
Guinness’s marketing story based on emotion has flipped traditional beer advertising on its head by getting rid of the template and telling a story – a real emotional story – that connects with people. The responses were overwhelmingly positive … customers and particularly the target customers are looking for meaningful stories. The emotion in this marketing strategy certainly is addressing this end state in our opinion.
This Guinness “Empty Chair” commercial salutes the character of a community as they honor one of their own who is out of sight, but not out of mind. They remind us that a true test of character is what you do when no one’s looking.
The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character. Guinness proudly raises a glass to those who are #MadeOfMore.
Guinness has made the message as clean and simple as possible. You cannot overachieve on the simplicity of the message. A message that the reader will quickly grasp and fully appreciate. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words. Guinness certainly gets it and tells an interesting story as it weaves the message together.
Many business leaders are uncertain about the future. What will great marketing look like in the years ahead? Guinness’ spot shows the way.
The marketing works in many ways.
First, it breaks through the clutter. It is visually arresting, surprising and beautiful. After watching it once, I wanted to watch it again. There are no better means of influence or the power of persuasion than emotion. Hands down the best, in our opinion. And enhanced with a great dose of curiosity.
Are you using stories and emotion?
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the experiences are important to remember.
Second, it has solid branding; it is clear that this is for Guinness and the brand’s personality.
Third, it communicates a benefit. The entire spot revolves around the Guinness commitment to people. It is very clear that Guinness has something special and remarkable that they want to share.
The ad has generated an astonishing amount of buzz and attention. It is engaging, well branded and focused.
The ad was serious and emotional. It is like they left a note that says:
… there will be a seat left open, a light left on, a favorite dinner waiting, a warm bed made…because in your home, in our hearts; you’ve been missed. You’ve been needed, you’ve been cried for, prayed for. You are the reason we push on.
It touches deep emotions about loss and longing. And the spot worked to build the brand; it made people feel proud of Guinness and its values.
Example takeaways
Stories and emotion are the future of great marketing strategy, aren’t they?
12 Lessons from Ben and Jerry’s Marketing Strategies
Ben and Jerry’s marketing is changing the game of social.
What are you favorite brands? Which ones do you follow closely and learn the most from? When choosing to learn from others marketing successes, it is always helpful to choose great brands to follow. We follow Ben and Jerry’s marketing strategies because of their creativeness and unique approach to customer focus.
Meet Ben and Jerry’s. They have been successfully executing their social marketing strategy and plan for the first days of social media and social commerce. For over 20 years their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.
An introduction to Ben and Jerry’s is unnecessary, isn’t it?
With more than 600 retail locations in 34 countries, the ice cream scoop shop is the picture of success.
Ben and Jerry’s rode the baby boomer trend in the late 1980s, the swelling ranks of mid-age professionals that created the need where people could share and enjoy a unique ice cream dessert with friends and colleagues, away from work and home.
In our opinion, the company has changed the way companies market themselves to customers. Here is how we feel they have been so successful:
Marketing Strategy Case Studies … market segmentation
The company has stayed with the upper-scale of the ice cream market, competing on product quality rather than convenience or price, which are the case with its closestcompetitors. They target customers with high-end ice cream tastes and unique flavors.
Execution
The company continues to focus on its original product bundle that includes great ice cream, unique flavors, quality service, and a nice environment to hang around. They keep their focus on paying attention to the details of great execution and service.
Social Media
One of the earliest adopters of the use of social media for marketing and social commerce, Ben and Jerry’s has certainly taken a leadership position in social engagement. Their social media strategy is built on their company website and six additional social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, Instagram, and YouTube.
Adaptation and innovation
Ben and Jerry’s have clearly embraced the social realm. With a strong presence on multiple social networks, the brand has set a high bar when it comes to being social and engaging its customers. They are at or near the top of nearly every major brand ranking in social commerce.
Ben and Jerry’s ability to wear so many hats on corporate success, “local” favorite, and Internet sensation warrants close examination.
What makes this company so good at being social and executing a great marketing strategy? And what can it teach us? Here are our thoughts on these questions:
Customer collaboration
Collaboration with customers is used to obtain customer ideas on new flavors. Fans inspired the best-selling Cherry Garcia, Chunky Monkey, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavors.
Customer relationships
Instead of solely focusing efforts on accumulating new customers, it cultivates its current relationships. This ensures more fans/followers in the long run, as well as the continued existence of brand advocates. This holds true across the board: in-store experiences are highly valued, along with online engagement, emphasizing the importance of customer service.
Interactive customer engagement
Engagement is a high priority for the brand, and they continually look for new ways to collect inputs from customers. A good current example is their ‘Scoop Truck’, which travels around the country giving out free samples of new products and soliciting customer inputs.
They believe in letting customer engagement and conversation occur as naturally as possible. They listen carefully, observe, and applynew ideas from what they learn.
Encourage sharing
Happy customers are eager to share good experiences and offers. For example, frequent promotions garner an extraordinary amount of engagement on social media through comments, “likes,” and shares.
Social mission focus
Ben and Jerry’s brand has always chosen a social mission … to stand for and stand behind. One great example of an issue they got behind was supporting the push to get corporate dollars out of politics … www.getthedoughout.org.
Experience customization
Ben and Jerry’s provides its unique experience through programs such as personalized ice cream flavors and localized store experiences. Their social sites, in particular, Pinterest and Instagram, encourage users to share their Ben and Jerry’s moments’ which are shared on all their social sites.
Taking a stand
Giving consumers a charitable reason to buy that ice cream cone or package is beneficial for all. The takeaway from Ben and Jerry’s is to know your customer and tie that in with what matters in the world … so, pay attention to how your brand can fit into trending topics.
Showing customer appreciation
Appreciation for their customers. The lead in a quote to this article from Ben Cohen says it all about their culture and success at showing customers appreciation.
Whether we are discussing businesses that are social, the best at engaging customers, or being great at a social commerce business, there are few businesses in the class of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.
Being social is a core component of Ben and Jerry’s marketing strategy. It is the integrating ingredient of their online and online to traditional marketing/media.
Not all businesses can go to the extent that Ben and Jerry’s does. But they can support local issues and do weekly online promotions to increase customer engagement, gain new customers and convert good customers into advocates.
Lots of ideas here that can be easily replicated … which ones do you feel could benefit your business? How could you improve the Ben and Jerry’s marketing strategy for your business?
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improve your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Do you like to hear a great story? How about telling stories? Employing awesome storytelling. Stories and storytelling examples are a great way to help spread ideas for creative marketing.
For a long time, marketing was driven by taglines—short, evocative slogans that captured the essence of a brand’s message. Nike encouraged us to “Just Do It,” while Apple inspired us to “Think Different.” Miller Lite simply had to say, “Tastes great, less filling” and product flew off the shelves.
Taglines worked because they cut through the clutter and stood out in a sea of brands vying for our attention. Marketers needed to project images that were compact, but meaningful or risk getting lost in the mix. Yet it is no longer enough to merely grab attention. Marketers nowneed to hold attention.
Here we will share two great story and storytelling examples to illustrate the how’s and why of these techniques.
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
– Edwin Schlosberg
Have you noticed that facts are meaningless without a contextual story? Don’t tell facts to influence, tell stories. The more you improve storytelling, the more your influence … it is as simple as that.
Stories make it easier for people to understand. And therefore they are the best way, by far, to spread your ideas.
Great storytelling and stories are a very integral part of being persuasive. If you want to persuade your customers and create a memorable experience at the same time, you must master the psychology of storytelling.
Stories are a great means for sharing and interpreting experiences, and great experiences have this innate ability to change the way in which we view our world.
One of my favorite experts in storytelling is Karen Dietz. Earlier this year she wrote an interesting blog about fractal storytelling. Here is a short excerpt:
I know you are wondering, “What the heck is Fractal Storytelling!?” It’s the basic idea that stories people tell in organizations do not exist in isolation, they are always part of a larger shared story. Stories in an organization are linked together, parts of a greater whole.
Storytelling, when properly practiced, pulls people into a dialogue. It’s about engagement and interaction. The audience is just as active a participant as the storyteller. In contrast, many companies and brands still relentlessly push messages to their employees and into the marketplace without meaningful context or relevancy.
Here are two awesome story examples that illustrate many of the key points in stories and storytelling:
Story and storytelling examples … the Google reunion video
Have you seen the Google Reunion video where a story is told of long lost friends? The video was made by Google India, and the point, of course, is to promote Google Search. But it also reaches a new level of what can be done with the value of creative stories.
If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here …a short 3+ minutes.
The story is this: a man in Delhi tells his granddaughter about his childhood friend, Yusuf. He hasn’t seen Yusuf since the Partition of India in 1947 when India and Pakistan became separate countries and the two friends were forced to separate. The man’s granddaughter arranges for the two to meet again.
The story is simple and direct. It’s beautiful and honest, and true. The photography is spectacular. The music adds to the very good acting.
Do you use stories in your customer engagement … or perhaps in marketing messages?
Creative story lessons
A lot of us are trying to figure out how to improve the use of storytelling as part of our marketing. Very few of us do it well. There are several things to be learned from this excellent video:
This video is about as emotional as it gets. Stories like this provide a chance to experience a variety of emotions without the risk of those emotions themselves. Emotions like wonder, fear, courage, or love can be tested out in the minds of those as they listen to a story.
You may remember the feelings of emotions that can trigger memories or create resolve as a result of hearing such stories. The experience of hearing stories can awaken portions of emotional lives that may have lain dormant or have not yet been explored.
Be dynamic with your stories like Google. Nothing is more important to narrative content than imagination, so give vivid descriptions and use emotional hooks and humor to get people fully engaged.
This story definitely engages us, doesn’t it? Be creative, not only with words and images but also with the methods you use to convey them. Like the music as well as the messages.
Understanding others
Well-told stories can help us to learn about other cultures, ideas, and ways of thinking. They can provide opportunities to know how past generations responded to challenges. They can also let us know how new generations are encountering and dealing with similar opportunities or the new challenges they face.
This video has some of each and then some. In the background is the partition of India, a painful episode in the history of India and Pakistan.
These aren’t just two old friends who haven’t seen each other for a long time. This is a creative story that builds on some big forces: politics, religion, geography, nationalism.
If you really listen to your customers, as Google has, you can leverage their stories to drive your creativity. By analyzing their stories of how your products and services fit into their lives, you can gain valuable insight into their needs and desires.
These can be hugely beneficial to other aspects of your business. Like product design and development and ongoing marketing strategy. The reunion has done that well don’t you think?
Story and storytelling examples … the brand can be central in the story
It’s obvious that this video is promoting Google. But the use of Google is woven into the narrative in a way that feels natural. It’s not intrusive or forced. It works very effectively. Especially when it is not about Google but about Google customers. Simply about how people use Google products.
The message
There are two messages in the video that are being driven home by Google. The first is that the work Google does is making a difference. It is making the world a better place through its search engine. But it’s not about technology. It’s about what people do with technology. How they apply it to solve their problems.
The second message, while a definite subset of the first, is as important. That being the old world was one where people were driven apart. But there is a change in the old world where technology is ushering in a new world. This is a new world where people are brought together in a way that would not have existed a decade ago.
Guinness marketing strategy makes storytelling a big difference maker
Have you seen this Guinness marketing video? A significant change in the Guinness marketing strategy we believe. The strategy is using simple storytelling to gain our attention. Refreshing.
Let’s examine this video and strategy and what contributes to their strengths and weaknesses. We want to evaluate if it has the ability to influence and persuade with its storytelling.
Everyone hates TV commercials, and this is a well-known fact amongst the people who make TV commercials. Fortunately, a few brands and ad agencies are turning things around with genuine, heartfelt storytelling marketing. Guinness is trying to become one of these brands.
As you can see, this Guinness ad veers away from the clichéd beer model and creates its own: beer-drinking, manly men that can be both strong and sensitive. It also creates an impactful and unique message promoting qualities like dedication, loyalty, and friendship:
The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character.
Guinness is no stranger to effective video marketing. This new video reached three million views within four days of online release. A simple plot; a game of wheelchair basketball followed by a pint of Guinness.
The twist is that only one of the men in the group is an actual wheelchair user – the rest, it seems, are his friends who are playing wheelchair basketball so that they can all play together.
Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. This video certainly achieves this goal, don’t you think?
Let’s evaluate other keys to this video and storytelling marketing strategy:
Ensure your story is relevant to the target market
Keep in mind that one message does not fit all. It starts with knowing your target market. Here the target market is young adults with a high focus on maturity. It focuses on the traits of friendship and sharing happiness. This video is certainly relevant to this market.
Grab and hold viewers’ attention
The Guinness goal is to hold the audience’s attention with interesting information. Keep in mind that people don’t watch ads … they watch what interests them. Your ad messages must be interesting to your target communities. This message certainly grabs and holds attention based on simple emotion.
Make your messages simple
Simple messages that the reader will quickly understand are the goal. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words. Videos, well, they do even better than pictures. Creating customer emotion does not get any simpler than this, does it?
This video from Guinness flips the switch by presenting a group of athletic, beer-drinking men who are defined as much by their kindness as their physical strength.
The spot’s “Made of More” message is refreshing, memorable, and heartwarming—acting as a breath of fresh air within the beer industry.
Consider the end state values to your customers
Guinness’s marketing strategy has flipped traditional beer advertising on its head by getting rid of the template and telling a story – a real story – that connects with people.
The responses were overwhelmingly positive to customers and particularly the target customers who are looking for meaningful stories. The marketing strategy certainly is addressing this end state in our opinion.
Influence and persuasion
There are no better means of influence or persuasion than emotion. It is hands down the best, in our opinion. The video focuses on emotional appeal in grand fashion.
They are saying that people who drink Guinness are decent people who are good at the core. This advert scores 10/10 for the emotional engagement factor. It is the secret of this video’s message and story’s success.
“For the most part, [beer commercials] depict men as unfeeling doofuses who only want to hook up with hot women and watch sports without being bothered by their wives.
… Guinness flips the switch by presenting a group of athletic, beer-drinking men who are defined as much by their kindness as their physical strength.”
The reason I admire this story so much is simple: it’s different, thoughtful, and has an unexpected ending. While many beer advertisements rely on slapstick humor, an overkill of masculinity, and a simple message, “drink our beer,” this one takes a different approach.
It is both effective and creative. The story’s “Made of More” message is refreshing, memorable, and heartwarming—acting as a breath of fresh air within the beer industry.
Guinness has definitely taken advantage of this open opportunity in the beer marketplace—and they are doing it with style and class.
After looking over these enablers, we believe Guinness has created a very effective commercial. What do you think? Does this video story persuade you?
The bottom line
Remember to watch for your own biases. We often see what we are looking for so don’t let that happen to you. And keep an open mind when you are working on the story.
Most saw little utility in questioning how things were done. That’s why most people can’t innovate. In fact, while researching Mapping Innovation, I found that the best innovators were not the ones who were the smartest or even the ones who worked the hardest, but those who continually looked for new problems to solve.
They were always asking new questions, that’s how they found new things The truth is that to drive innovation, we need to build a culture of inquiry. We need to ask “why” things are done the way they are done, “what if” we took a different path, and “how” things can be done differently.
If you don’t explore, you won’t discover and if you don’t discover, you won’t invent. Once you stop inventing, you will be disrupted.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
