The Social Revolution
There was an interesting discussion yesterday hosted by WARC at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity with Grainne Wafer of Diageo's Guinness brand and Callum McCahon of its social agency Born Social.
If ad agencies want to locate the source of their power dilution, they need to look deeply at social.
Some key points from the conversation.
1. Guinness has always been built on creativity. In 1929, Sir Edward Guinness said we could only advertise if the quality of the advertising matched the quality of the beer. This benchmark for creativity remains today.
2. Our briefs always include the phrase "Only Guinness could, only Guinness would." When reimagining creativity for new audiences, it’s important to take the fundamentals of the past and reimagine them for the future, raising the bar of creativity.
3. In the late 2010s, media consumption changed, the media landscape fragmented, and our reliance on broadcast advertising diminished.
4. Consumption habits also changed, with a rise in premiumization and at-home behaviors. The cultural mood shifted, and some of the dark, masculine associations of Guinness no longer served us for recruiting new audiences.
5. In 2014, Mintel described Guinness as no longer being cool, so we knew we had to do something different. We focused on quality, distinctiveness, and innovation, and reimagined these with a community-first social marketing model.
6. The balance is knowing what you stand for. For Guinness, it’s quality, distinctivity, and innovation. We’ve always had three words at our core: power, goodness, and communion. These remain constant, while we reimagine them in new ways with new audiences and channels.
7. Social media isn’t just a platform; it’s a place with different behaviors. We needed to climb down from the pedestal and lean into these behaviors. Co-creation was key. We partnered with different communities and creators to reimagine our assets
8. It’s about listening deeply to our audiences. We call it creativity with precision. We understand our drinkers and use social listening to adapt quickly
9. Social media allowed our fans to have a voice and be part of the brand
I just checked Instagram and Guinness has 359k followers- its most recent post is 20 hours old and it currently has 2,824 likes.
#brandmarketing #socialmedia #fans #creativity #diageo #guinness #bornsocial
MD at SDK Consulting Ltd
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