Guinness Marketing Campaigns Show Their Creativity

Have you noticed that the world of marketing is changing? And rapidly. Traditional media vehicles are losing effectiveness as people communicate in new and different ways. Mass audiences are fragmenting into small segments. Developing a point of difference is harder than ever. This Guinness marketing campaign demonstrates that Guinness marketing has certainly noticed.

Guinness marketing campaign shows selling is not marketing.

Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced.

-David Freemantle

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.

Related: Would This Galaxy S5 Marketing Video Persuade You?

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 over achieve 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 spot 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 is 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.

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.

Stories and emotion are the future of great marketing, aren’t they?

Summary

So remember this:

It is not what advertising does with the consumer; it is what the consumer does after digesting the advertisement. After looking over these commercials … how much have you learned?

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?

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:

Guinness Marketing Campaign Shows Their Creativity

Secrets to Share on Lego’s Marketing Campaigns

12 Lessons from Ben and Jerry’s Marketing Strategies

Habits That Result in the Most Success for Business Leaders

The key to business leaders accomplishing great things, staying productive, and general success is discipline. That means having a routine and sticking to it, and according to top leaders, it usually involves a healthy breakfast, jogging, and keeping your inbox empty.

Discipline is probably the one trait most associated with achievement. It’s because accomplishing great things involves consistently doing the right things over and over again, even when it’s hard.

Take exercise, for example. It’s a habit that many highly successful people credit for helping them feel energized, creative, and focused. The difference between mediocre people and those who truly do great things? The latter will run the miles and lift the heavyweights, even when they don’t feel like it.

Here are the daily habits my research gives the best results:

Manage stress

I take time to myself in three ways. The first is through extreme adrenaline sports, either downhill biking or athletic skiing. These require focus and skill in order to be ready for unexpected obstacles or to control [high] speeds in skiing, and they serve both as healthy distractions and physical training.

My second hobby is cardio, whether it be cycling with a street bike or ski mountaineering. This is almost like meditating, the body knows what to do and you can replace mind chanting with breathing, relaxation, and pure enjoyment.

Lastly, I’m venturing into a new experience with Reiki yoga, in the hopes of becoming a master. I was recently enlightened following a trip to India. Consequently, all of these activities contribute to setting myself up for success with stress management and increased performance.

Plan the details of your day

I’m pretty obsessed with my calendar. Every moment of the day is accounted for, to make sure I’m spending my time on the things that are driving progress. I don’t want to get sucked into replying to emails or getting distracted. I schedule time not only for meetings but for working on projects or tasks, clearing out emails, thinking, and brainstorming, and planning for the week ahead.

Even my workouts, and what things I need to remember for the kids the next day. It’s my compass on what I should be doing at any given time.

Start the day with 10 minutes of meditation

Every morning I wake up with a cup of coffee, then meditate for 10 minutes in the stillness of my living room. I like starting my day with intention, and meditating helps me center my focus on what I want to accomplish in my business, personal life, health, and relationships.

The mind is a very powerful tool, and when you concentrate your energies on a limited set of goals, amazing things begin to happen. Michael Jordan once said, ‘You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.’ I also remind myself how lucky and thankful I am to be doing what I love with such talented and inspiring people.

Be a reader

I’m a heavy reader of mysteries. I started when I was a kid with Agatha Christie, then I moved west with Connelly and others. Now I’ve grown to love historical bios and even today’s political essays.

It’s a great escape for me to jump into a new or unfamiliar environment through novels, or to broaden my perspective and genuine interest in specific historical periods or today’s political context through essays.

Remove distractions

One of the biggest challenges of today’s world is isolating yourself from all the clutter of life. To remove distractions, I use noise-canceling headphones and do not listen to any music with lyrics. With fewer distractions, I find my concentration increases exponentially, and I’m much more productive.

Spend time alone in the morning

I always find time alone in the morning, whether it’s walking the dog or eating breakfast by myself, to clearly set my priorities, so I know what I need to accomplish each day. I make sure to outline not only my personal priorities, but also priorities for my team, so I can be sure both get done.

Once I get into the office, my day becomes about how I can take any obstacles out of the way for my team, so they can execute at the highest level on their priorities. I like to call this working on the business rather than in the business.

Empowering employees to do their best work has always been the key to my success, as well as being the hallmark of a world-class organization.

Make the most of your commute

I try to maximize my time by using my commute for planning and thinking. Several days a week I jog or bike to work to give my mind space to decompress and mull over business problems.

Research has shown that exercise improves memory and learning, and I’ve found it helps my creativity. Often ideas that come to me during my commute are then the basis for directions the company will take within the next week or month.

Never leave any emails unread

My inbox has zero or close to zero emails and it has been that way for years. My rules are: First, when I get an email, I will respond to it right away if I think it needs my response, as much as possible.

Second, if I have to think about it, I will mostly do it in 24 hours or acknowledge if it is going to take longer.

Third, if they do not meet the first or second rule, I will never respond to them.

Fourth, for topics I am not interested in, I will put a rule to auto-delete them so as not to waste my time. This helps me be on top of things and stay productive.

Smile and talk to strangers

Growing up in Texas, it was normal behavior to look someone in the eye and smile at them as they walk toward you on the sidewalk. Living in Boston and now San Francisco, it became clear that’s definitely not normal behavior everywhere.

I found myself conforming, and then realized that just saying ‘Good morning’ to someone in the elevator or having a short conversation with my Uber driver gives me the energy to go out and take on the rest of my day.

It can be so easy for me to get consumed by my own crazy day-to-day that I can forget to take a step back and take in the big picture, and just getting a quick insight into someone else’s world helps me refocus and prioritize what’s happening in mine.

Get the ball rolling early

Starting my day early with a morning routine centered around productivity helps set the tone for the day. A typical morning for me looks like this: over coffee I’ll answer any outstanding emails, network a bit by posting something on LinkedIn, read the news and catch up on current events, check my calendar, and send out any requests or questions that popped into my head overnight.

After that I get ready for work, knowing the ball is in motion for the day and I’m set up for success.

Avoid meetings

I limit the number of meetings that I’m involved in and don’t allow briefings where the meeting is dominated by presenting recaps, information that is incomplete, or information everyone already knows.

Send an update ahead of time so the meeting can be spent debating and challenging, not staring at PowerPoints. The number of hours spent scheduling, preparing for, and sitting through meetings eats into the time that should be spent thinking and engaging in the business.

Proactively manage decision fatigue

Humans can be astonishingly bad at managing and recognizing the impact of decision fatigue (the tendency to make worse choices after prolonged sessions of decision making when they are cognitively exhausted). To fight this phenomenon, I move my highest priority meetings to midmorning, when I’m most alert, and try to limit the number of decisions I make after lunch.

I also try to lock in a number of behaviors as routine, as opposed to making them daily choices, like whether I work out or drive a certain route to work every day. My favorite example is Barack Obama, who picked out his clothing the night before and only wore blue and gray suits for eight years to minimize his number of decisions.

If you want to devote all your energy to run the country (or your business/ family/organization), don’t spend your limited cognitive resources on variables that don’t move the needle.

Keep up on what’s going on outside

My goal is to build external context every day. There are lots of different ways I do this. I spend 30 to 45 minutes catching up on what’s happening outside of my own world. When you focus only on what affects your company or industry, you may miss the forest for the trees.

I run through news sources like BBC World News, CNBC, and NPR, focusing on broad trends. In addition, I make sure I have an average of one customer, partner, or competitive touch-point a day, so I have 360-degree context on my business to complement the internal perspective.

Eat as a family every night, no electronics allowed

I ensure that dinner time with my family is a protected and prioritized ritual. We all sit down together each evening and connect face-to-face (electronics are banned from the table).

No matter what is going on at work, I commit to dinnertime at home and am 100 percent present to catch up with my family. Knowing that I have that one hour a day set aside to focus on family allows me to be fully present in my work.

Leave your phone on the kitchen counter at night

In an ever-connected world, my brain needs a break from the constant presence and buzz of my phone: a new email to attend to, a fire to put out, or an idea to contemplate. To combat it, I never bring my phone into my bedroom when I go to sleep, to ensure I digitally disconnect every day.

Life is more than work, and with a family of four, I use the time to connect with my husband, process the day and plan for tomorrow, or unwind with The NYT crossword puzzle, completely uninterrupted.

To be the best I can be during the day, it’s important for me to have a restorative break each evening. Not having the phone reduces the temptation to continue working and gives me the respite I need.

Business Leaders: 7 Lessons My Silent Mentor Jack Welch Taught Me

I like to read … why? To be entertained, to learn new things, and to stimulate thinking. Jack Welsh is a favorite author of mine, especially when the book deals with business leaders and with employee development. I have a set of five authors that I selected over a decade ago to be my silent mentors … they mentor through their writings and presentations. Jack Welsh is one of my five mentors.

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.

Yes … they all do stimulate a lot of thinking and learning, but they all have a great knack for entertaining while they teach and silently mentor. They also share many other common attributes that makes them such successful mentors for me.

It probably is not necessary to tell you a little about Jack Welch. Welch is the former Chairman and CEO of General Electric who served in this capacity between the years 1981 to2001. The two decades when GE was one, if not the top brands in the world. He gained a solid reputation for uncanny business acumen and unique leadership strategies. He remains a highly regarded figure in business circles due to his innovative management strategies and leadership style.

There were two major eras of innovation in the 20th century. The first hit its stride in the 1920s and the second had its biggest impact in the 1990s. We’re now on the brink of a new era of innovation and its impact will likely be profound. Though much like Drucker back in the 1930s, we are still unable to fully grasp what is yet to come.

In this blog, we have selected 7 favorite topics of Welsh and used quotations and a compendium of ideas from many of Jack Welch’s books, articles, and presentations to focus on what Welsh teaches on each. We use these thoughts regularly in our work with our client teams.

Leadership

Managers turn the crank, leaders inspire. Leaders are people who share their vision of how things can be done better.

What we are looking for are leaders at every level who can energize, excite, and inspire rather than enervate, depress, and control.

Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance. Getting employees excited about their work is the key to being a great business leader.

We now know where productivity – real and limitless productivity – comes from. It comes from challenged, empowered, excited, rewarded teams of people.

Business leaders … reality

Face reality, and then act decisively. Most mistakes that leaders make arise from not being willing to face reality and then acting on it. Facing reality often means saying and doing things that are not popular, but only by coming to grips with reality will things get better.

Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.

Change

Change, BEFORE you have to. Change is a big part of the reality in business. New ideas are the lifeblood of business. And the basis for creative change.

Willingness to change is strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while. Keeping an eye out for change is both exhilarating and fun.

The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action – fast.

Famous business leaders of all time … competitive advantage

If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.

It doesn’t get any simpler than this. This concept resulted in GE selling those businesses they owned that were not number 1 or 2 in there respective markets.

Business leaders who changed the world … learning organization

Turn your company into a learning organization to spark free flow of communication and exchange of ideas. Create a truly confident workforce. Confidence is a vital ingredient of any learning organization. The prescription for winning is speed, simplicity, and self-confidence. Self-confident people are open to good ideas regardless of their source and are willing to share them.

Just as surely as speed flows from simplicity, simplicity is grounded in self-confidence.

The desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere – and to rapidly convert this learning into action – is its ultimate competitive advantage.

An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage.

A business leader focuses on teamwork

Managers must learn to become team players. Middle managers have to be team members and coaches. Take steps against those managers who wouldn’t learn to become team players. And the sooner the better.

Business is all about capturing intellect from every person. The way to engender enthusiasm it to allow employees far more freedom and far more responsibility.

Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do because then they will act.

The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.

Globalization

Globalization has changed GE into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital – the world’s best talent and greatest ideas.

GE’s tremendous growth in the two decades of Jack Welch’s leadership can be attributed to the search and development of talent, more than any other factor. Particularly leadership talent. Just look around at all the GE senior leadership that are now CEOs of major US companies.

Yes, there are probably many, many current great authors and leaders with these attributes, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better leadership silent mentor than Jack Welsh.

The bottom line

You can’t make anything or anyone grow; you can only provide the right conditions. Jack Welch as a mentor selection is very effective at providing components of the right conditions. Employee growth and development were two of his key interests.

So, who are your favorite silent mentors, and what sets them apart for you? Any comments or questions to add below?

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 management and leadership skills. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the 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 continually improving your continuous learning?

Do you have a lesson about making your leadership 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***.