Discover Guinness Original. It’s like Guinness, only way more interesting, like you.
Think you know your Guinness? Sure, we all do. The black stuff. A creamy-headed, dark brooding pint. But that's not actually the original Guinness. Guinness original, created in 1856 had been knocking around unchanged for 260 years, but with the arrival of draught Guinness, everyone had forgotten all about the original brown bottle. It was about to disappear.
We needed to reinvent the brand and get the open-minded, craft beer loving hipsters of Britain to try this deliciously different and lively brew. They’d love the taste, and the back-story, if we could pitch it to them in the right way.
As Arthur Guinness had pretty much stolen a Shoreditch Porter recipe to create his stout, we decided to go back to its East London roots with a whole 'discovery' programme of Guinness Original inspired secret music, art, food and film events and partnerships; making sure people experienced Guinness Original in exciting and rewarding ways.
The 'Discover' bottle wrap
The re-designed bottle
The product itself was at the heart of everything. We redesigned the bottle and created a series of special bottle-wraps, then distributed them to our various partner locations.
The wrapped bottles were like clues in a treasure hunt. Whenever people encountered them they would uncover another interesting East London event or location where they could experience Guinness Original. Places like Labour & Wait hardware store, Huckle the Barber and special Backyard Cinema screening and Sofar Sounds gigs to name just a few. By googling a simple search term found on the wrap they would unlock free tickets and their next free bottle of Guinness.
We pasted cryptic fly posters around East London, free of any Guinness branding, that teased the various local events and locations where people could find Guinness Original. As with the bottle wraps, they held a search term that would unlock tickets and samples.
Special bottle wraps held invitations to the launch event
The whole campaign kicked off with an event. Press and trade bigwigs were invited to take a barge trip up the Regent canal. On board they met the master brewer and learnt all about the drink and its history, when the barge arrived in Hackney there was a party, with lots of Guinness Original inspired music and food pairings created by local musicians and restaurants.