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.
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You just can’t say it. You have to get people to say it to each other. Awesome quote from James Farley, yes? Getting people talking about your content and your business. And certainly, James Farley certainly gets it … probably had it down before anyone else? What you may be asking? The concept of what it takes for content marketing success, of course. Content marketing makes Disney a winner and shows the way.
Content marketing tactics such as blog posts, feature articles, optimized website copy, white papers, social media content, and press releases move consumers along a specific path.
Our job as marketers is to do the hard work of
finding and nurturing charismatic ideas we can be proud of. One place to start
is to look at the ideas you’re trying to spread. Consider whether they’re
charismatic enough to earn the effort you’re putting into them–and if not, how
to replace them with ideas that are.
Content marketing generates awareness of your brand, product or service; inspires consumers to engage and consider you; converts them into leads and sales, and creates advocates. Lots to gain, yes?
But there is a tremendous and ever-growing completion for these gains, isn’t there? Often it seems almost a bridge too far. So we need to know how to write the best content.
It starts with a subject told in a different way and a catchy headline. But you must hold the audience with useful details throughout your article.
So you need to work hard to go after these potential gains. Discover how content marketing exposes consumers to your brand, engages potential customers, and converts them into leads and sales.
The following are 12 laws of content marketing for ensuring the success of an online content marketing strategy that even small businesses can successfully implement today:
Do your homework
Start with a plan and process for researching the market and knowing your customers. This will provide many ideas for developing compelling, relevant content of interest to your specific market’s customers.
Listening carefully.
Laws of content marketing … listening
Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking.
Read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.
You must gain trust
Content marketing faces the same reader scrutiny and skepticism as traditional advertising. Being genuinely helpful is the only way to engage prospects to gain their trust and build strong relationships.
Content must be personalized to increase its consumption and influence. It must inspire the actions you desire. Your goal? Get the right information detail to the right decision-maker on a just in time basis.
As a content marketer, you need to find partners to help you spread your message. Whether that’s a business partner, a co-marketer, influencers or bloggers when you collaborate more people get in the know about the work you are trying to do.
The other neat thing about collaborating is that by working with different groups of people, you potentially will introduce your story to a whole new audience of people who are not familiar with your work.
Lots of influence here, yes?
Influence
Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services, and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.
If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.
Timeliness
Nothing beats timeliness in terms of the value of information. Timely insights score big with your content consumers. Stay on top of your market and continually refine your ability to report on what is going on now.
Original thinking
Content readers are searching for new ideas not rehash. They value original thinking highly. Offer it. Create well-conceived original themes and content.
Original thoughts trump quantity any day. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.
Reciprocity
Don’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.
Simplicity and clarity
Does your content meaning jump out to the reader? Can they get the meaning easily without deep thought? Simplicity in understandability and readability are essential factors that will drive your content’s success.
Learn as you go
Don’t think you can execute ‘drive-by’ content that will succeed. Plan and refine continuously. Use analytics and reliable tracking tools to know what is working best and follow these paths.
Disney’s content marketing … compounding
If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.
This sharing and discussing your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.
Accessibility
Don’t publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.
This is your time to create successful content marketing. With good continuity and persistence helpful, relevant content will be able to develop lasting relationships with your customers. Lead with initiative and own the moment. Dive in today and notice how much your business improvements grow.
The bottom line
Remember this simple fact. Stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in. Let your content marketing success be your difference-maker.
From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 12 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and — perhaps most importantly — your bottom line.
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.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
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 him on 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.
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