Back in black: how Guinness rose from pub bore to flavour of the year

It‘s hard to believe that only a decade ago a Mintel con­sumer report gave the fol­low­ing damn­ing ver­dict: “Sim­ply put, Guin­ness is no longer cool.”

Sales of the stout were slump­ing as the spot­light fell on a new wave of craft beers and easy-drink­ing lagers. Fast-for­ward to today and the black stuff has made a roar­ing come­back. Guin­ness is the UK’s best­selling draft beer today, account­ing for one in every nine pints pulled in pubs. Sales increased by 19% across Europe last year, while a YouGov sur­vey recent­ly crowned it the nation’s most recog­nised and pop­u­lar beer brand. 

“I nev­er believed I’d see this day. It’s fan­tas­tic,” said Sir Ivan Menezes, CEO of par­ent com­pa­ny Dia­geo, on announc­ing bumper annu­al results last month. So, more than 250 years after its first pints went on sale, how did Guin­ness pull off such an impres­sive resur­gence? 

Taking the brand back to basics

For a time, Guin­ness got caught up in fol­low­ing fads, accord­ing to Pete Brown, jour­nal­ist and author of Beer By Design: the art of good beer brand­ing.

“Ray-Ban, Levi’s, Coca-Cola – they’ve all lost their way at some point chas­ing some­one else’s mar­ket,” he says. “Guin­ness also had a time when it didn’t know what it was. It was launch­ing all kinds of beers and line exten­sions.” 

Brown believes that two things refo­cused the brand: the suc­cess of the Store­house brew­ery expe­ri­ence in Dublin and the 2012 launch of its long-run­ning ‘Made of more’ adver­tis­ing cam­paign.

“A great thought like that acts as an attrac­tion for cus­tomers, but it also reminds peo­ple work­ing for the brand what they’re there for,” he says.

Big-bud­get ad cam­paigns posi­tioned the drink as rugged­ly mas­cu­line but with a soft­er side, draw­ing on the brand’s core val­ues of “pow­er”, “good­ness” and “com­mu­nion”. Think 2013’s award-win­ning wheel­chair bas­ket­ball com­mer­cial high­light­ing male friend­ship or the film focus­ing on the sup­port that Welsh rug­by inter­na­tion­al Gareth Thomas received from his team when he came out as gay.

When we buy a beer, we’re buy­ing a lit­tle bit of an atti­tude

Guin­ness has also dou­bled down on its asso­ci­a­tion with Ire­land by pro­mot­ing St Patrick’s Day and invent­ed hol­i­day Arthur’s Day, which cel­e­brates its founder.

“When we buy a beer, we’re buy­ing a lit­tle bit of an atti­tude,” Brown argues. “The Irish inter­na­tion­al­ly have this rep­u­ta­tion for hav­ing the cra­ic – a real­ly good time. Going to an Irish pub or drink­ing Guin­ness gives oth­er cul­tures per­mis­sion to behave sim­i­lar­ly.” 

This kind of long-term brand-build­ing doesn’t come cheap, of course. Between 2017 and 2022, Dia­geo upped its mar­ket­ing expen­di­ture for all drinks by £1bn glob­al­ly – a 51% increase. It’s thought to spend about £100m pro­mot­ing Guin­ness alone each year.

Keeping ahead of consumer shifts

Build­ing those sol­id foun­da­tions has enabled Guin­ness to respond adroit­ly to broad­er changes in Britons’ drink­ing habits. 

For instance, the two-part pour – which requires bar staff to pause halfway through pulling the pint to let it set­tle – has long been a unique sell­ing point for the brand. But this rit­u­al com­pli­cates mat­ters in an era when con­sumers increas­ing­ly want to drink at home. In response, Guin­ness is mar­ket­ing both a home draught tap and the Nitro­surge device. The lat­ter attach­es to spe­cial cans of the brew and, via a nine-part process, promis­es to pour pub-qual­i­ty pints.

What of the upstart craft beer mar­ket? While Guin­ness tried to get in on the trend direct­ly at first by launch­ing lim­it­ed-edi­tion brews, the brand arguably now caters to those turned off by over­priced IPAs.

“Con­sumers are opt­ing for a no-frills alter­na­tive at a more afford­able price dur­ing a time of high infla­tion,” says Jane Glee­son, edi­tor of Irish food mag­a­zine Guz­zle.

At the same time, the new taste for more com­plex beers has boost­ed its pop­u­lar­i­ty, accord­ing to Gill Sher­win, co-founder of online retail­er Best of British Beer.

“Peo­ple are drink­ing less dur­ing the week and sav­ing it for the week­end,“ she says. “Then they want to drink some­thing they per­ceive as a pre­mi­um prod­uct. Lager drinkers tend to find it eas­i­er to move to Guin­ness than a craft ale, say, because of its flavour, cold­ness and creami­ness.”

Although many pubs will offer a dizzy­ing array of ales, Guin­ness is often the only stout they have on tap. That’s thanks to Diageo’s heft in dis­tri­b­u­tion and close atten­tion to qual­i­ty con­trol.

Sher­win says that when friends of hers who are “real­ly into beer walk into a pub where the choice isn’t bril­liant, they’ll go for a Guin­ness because they know what it’s going to be like”.

Amid the surge in pop­u­lar­i­ty of alco­hol-free bev­er­ages, Guin­ness got in on the action with its 0.0 beer. Launched in 2021, it has been front and cen­tre of the brand’s mar­ket­ing push­es around St Patrick’s Day and rug­by union’s Six Nations Cham­pi­onship, with cam­paigns urg­ing pun­ters to drink respon­si­bly. 

Capturing the attention of younger drinkers

The great Guin­ness revival would have not been pos­si­ble if the brand hadn’t been able to reach a wider base of con­sumers. Part of its slump can be attrib­uted to the per­cep­tion of stout as a heavy, old-fash­ioned drink – a world away from crisp, sparkling Mediter­ranean lagers.

“Guin­ness has been try­ing real­ly hard to get to the younger audi­ence since about 2018–19, doing every­thing it can on every sin­gle front,” says Beat­riz Repiso, founder and CEO of Otter­na­tive Mar­ket­ing. 

Chief among those fronts is, of course, social media. Guin­ness has splashed out on ded­i­cat­ed con­tent for Face­book, Insta­gram and YouTube that trans­lates the cin­e­mat­ic feel of its tele­vi­sion ads for each plat­form, such as 2017’s award-win­ning “Comp­ton cow­boys” series. 

Social lis­ten­ing also comes into play, enabling Guin­ness to “analyse trends and how to jump on to these with­out los­ing the inter­est of their loy­al cus­tomer base”, Repiso argues. “It looks for what the younger audi­ence is attract­ed to and posi­tions itself in front of those peo­ple, but with­out touch­ing the brand val­ues that are so impor­tant for the loy­al cus­tomer.”

Take user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, for instance. Dur­ing the Covid lock­downs in the UK, Guin­ness spot­ted a trend for drinkers to post pho­tos of every­day objects that remind­ed them of a pint of Guin­ness. It spun this into the #Look­sLikeGuin­ness cam­paign to build antic­i­pa­tion for the reopen­ing of pubs.

Pubs, we’ve missed you. See you inside. #Look­sLikeGuin­ness pic.twitter.com/8jBeHrAkyZ

— Guin­ness GB (@GuinnessGB) May 13, 2021

At about the same time dozens of ded­i­cat­ed Guin­ness influ­encers start­ed to pop up, shar­ing reviews, tips and memes. The #Guin­ness­Chal­lenge, which chal­lenges drinkers to sip their pint so that the remain­der lines up with the bot­tom of brand­ed glass­es’ harp logo, has attract­ed 6.7 mil­lion views on Tik­Tok. It’s the kind of organ­ic engage­ment that most brands can only dream of.

Guin­ness has even encour­aged what might seem, at first glance, less com­pli­men­ta­ry atten­tion. For instance, it has col­lab­o­rat­ed with the cre­ator of Shit Lon­don Guin­ness, an Insta­gram account which high­lights bad­ly poured pints in pubs across the cap­i­tal, on prod­uct launch­es.

What’s next for Guinness?

Can the good times keep flow­ing? Dia­geo cer­tain­ly thinks so. It’s set to open a £73m Guin­ness ‘cul­ture hub’ at Old Brew­ers’ Yard in cen­tral Lon­don that promis­es a “grain-to-glass immer­sive vis­i­tor expe­ri­ence” in the mould of the Dublin orig­i­nal. 

But it will need to cap­ture more than just young peo­ple or occa­sion­al drinkers to keep grow­ing in the UK, Jenk­in­son argues. Its suc­cess has led to oth­er com­pa­nies want­i­ng in on the sec­tor, with Brew­Dog launch­ing its own stout, called Black Heart, at the start of the year. It has been try­ing to tap into Guin­ness’s core audi­ence with taste test­ing at Six Nations games.

That means Guin­ness can­not rest on its lau­rels.

“I’d like to see Guin­ness be braver. It’s a ques­tion of how, with such a strong, bold, mas­cu­line her­itage and brand expres­sion, it adapts that to become rel­e­vant and appeal­ing to a wider audi­ence,” he says. “It’s both a chal­lenge and a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

It‘s hard to believe that only a decade ago a Mintel consumer report gave the following damning verdict: “Simply put, Guinness is no longer cool.”

Sales of the stout were slumping as the spotlight fell on a new wave of craft beers and easy-drinking lagers. Fast-forward to today and the black stuff has made a roaring comeback. Guinness is the UK’s bestselling draft beer today, accounting for one in every nine pints pulled in pubs. Sales increased by 19% across Europe last year, while a YouGov survey recently crowned it the nation’s most recognised and popular beer brand. 

“I never believed I’d see this day. It’s fantastic,” said Sir Ivan Menezes, CEO of parent company Diageo, on announcing bumper annual results last month. So, more than 250 years after its first pints went on sale, how did Guinness pull off such an impressive resurgence?