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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