The Guinness commercial featuring U.S. Olympic biathletes Tracy and Lanny Barnes lasted 65 seconds and lived 48 hours, but it attracted 600,000 views and more than 4 million media impressions. The Diageo brand developed the spot in less than 10 days. It is the first, real-life story about people’s character that Guinness marketers plan to use to underscore the “character” of their product, highlighted by its “made of more” slogan. The brand had told its agencies, Taylor, BBDO and others, about its vision for using real-life stories to promote its slogan. The staff at Taylor heard the Barnes' story and approached Guinness marketers about it. The Barnes'
were both competing to make the Sochi team -- Tracy qualified, but Lanny was sick and dropped out of the last event. Tracy then gave up her spot on the team for her sister. Guinness Brand Director Doug Campbell said, “Coincidentally, we’d been working on ad concepts that weren’t too far off this real instance.” The brand contacted the sisters to see if they were open to being in the ad. They agreed, and BBDO, N.Y., designed a spot featuring a still image of the sisters side by side. It recounts their story with subtitles in Guinness gold and culminates with the on-screen words: "The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character."
TAKING IT DOWN: Guinness debuted the ad on Tuesday but had to take it down Wednesday night to comply with the IOC’s Rule 40, which kicked in Thursday and prevents non-Olympic sponsors from featuring Olympians in promotions. Campbell said, “When it came in, I don’t remember who said, there’s this (IOC rule) we might need to be conscious of. It could have been someone in legal or with an agency.” But he added, “We would have done the story whether there had been an Olympics or not. The Olympics makes it more complicated but that’s okay. The fact that it was the pinnacle of the sport is part of what gives the story its power.” Guinness’ media buying firm, Carat, bought inventory on ESPN, Comedy Central and USA for the ad, while its digital agency secured space on Facebook. Between Facebook and Guinness’ YouTube page, the ad was viewed 600,000 times. It also netted 4 million media impressions. Campbell said, “You could look at it (as a lot of effort for a very short window of time), or you could look at it as a real-life story wrote an ad for us. Guinness is a small brand. Any opportunity we can get to showcase our values we want to pursue. The fact that it has to come down after 48 hours is regrettable, but looking at what we invested compared to what we get out of it is an easy trade. It’s part of the model of marketing. You’re looking for, arguably, bigger or smaller moments in culture where, there’s your brand story.”
