Guinness and the role of strategic storytelling

JOHN SIMMONS*

Director of Brand Language, The Writer

The contrasting definitions of Saxon/Celtic are beguiling. Where the Saxon is prosaic, the Celt is

poetic. Careful/carefree. Precise/approximate. Linear/sinuous. Head/heart. Scientifically

minded/artistically inclined. Given those choices, I take the second option in each case although

I worry a little if I am to avoid being precise. Any readers out there who unreservedly veer

towards the first options, well, youd be better off skipping to the next article (or probably another

journal). But if youre still with me, come on a sinuous but carefree journey, approximately about

the power of storytelling in strategic marketing. It might seem poetic at times, even to the

artistically inclined, but let your heart rule your head, and well see where we land. Perhaps in Tir

Na Nog?

Most of this paper will concern Guinness, a brand with Celtic roots (it even has the harp to

prove it) but strong Saxon influences. Arthur Guinness who founded the company in 1759 came

from Protestant English stock, albeit based in Ireland. And over the next 250 years Guinness has

progressedwith many ups and downs and diversions along the wayin pursuit of its own

mythic story.

The marketing landmarks of Guinness that we remember and loveexamples of iconic

advertisingare linked by long stretches of analysis, research and strategic planning. Necessary,

perhaps, but what people out there respond to are those storytelling interludes when we have

been persuaded that Guinness is good for you, that not everything in black and white makes

sense, and that you can achieve just about anything if you Believe. These memorable interludes

persuade us that Guinness really is the drink we would like to be seen withdespite a

distressingly high (from Guinnesss point of view) proportion of people thinking that the product

itself tastes foul.

That was never a problem my mother suffered. She was a Guinness drinker (unusual for

modern Guinness marketers who believe Guinness is overwhelmingly a male brand) and she

always preferred a bottle of Guinness to a mug of cocoa last thing at night. I was complicit in this,

being sent on errands to the off-licence to stock up (innocent days before licensing laws tightened

up on sales of alcohol to even well-meaning 10-year-olds). All this meant that Guinness was the

first brand name I recognised.

Skip forward 40 years. By now I was deep into a career embracing design and branding. I

wrote a book called, We, Me, Them and It, that aimed to improve the use of English in the

business world (Simmons, 2000). In this book, inspired by people like David Ogilvy (1986), a

lone pioneer in pursuit of imaginative writing in marketing, I advocated that people should

* Corresponding author: john.simmons@thewriter.co.uk

JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC MARKETING 14 1118 (MARCH 2006)

Journal of Strategic Marketing ISSN 0965254Xprint/ISSN 14664488 online # 2006 Taylor & Francishttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/09652540500369068

put more of their own personalities into their writing at work. In particular, I called one chapter,

Telling Stories, and gave examples of new brands I had helped to bring into being through

storytelling.

There was Lumino, where I had invented a Greek myth to give purpose and interest to a

new company selling lighting. And there was Barrington Stoke, a publisher of stories for children

with learning difficulties. How else to give the company appropriate meaning than by creating a

story?

The story goes that he would arrive at twilight, carrying a lantern to light his way and signal his arrival.

In the village meeting place he set down his lantern and placed five stones in a circle around him. The

young people of the village sat inside the stone circle while Barrington Stoke stood at the front in the

light of his lantern. Each of the stones represented a subject for storytelling: adventure, mystery, fable,

discovery and exploration.

He turned his lantern to shine on one of the stones and that decided the nature of the first story to be

told: a story of exploration, for example. In the flickering light the children sat entranced while

Barrington Stoke told the tale. And then another. And then another, until they were tired and ready for

sleep. But Barrington Stokes imagination was never exhaustedhe moved on to the next day, the

next village, the next story.

The Barrington Stoke story was the acceptable face of a mission and vision statement. It was

memorable and easily understandableso much so that it was printed in the Barrington Stoke

books so that children could also read it and understand what Barrington Stoke books were about.

One evening, out of the blue, I received an email from someone I had never met. But he had

just finished reading We, Me, Them and It and he described it as a fascinating journey. A simple

metaphor but I respond well to metaphors. I find most people do. They help us to make proper

sense of the world. The writer of the metaphor was Jon Potter and he invited me to meet him. As

his title turned out to be Global Brand Director (Guinness), I was round there with him almost

before a Guinness had had time to settle.

Jon explained to me that he had spent most of his time over the last year trying to get his

colleagues around the world to agree on a common brand essence for Guinness. Over many

years Guinness had grown by a mixture of opportunistic entrepreneurialism and hard-nosed

business pragmatisma true combination of Celtic and Saxon tendencies. The result was that the

brand was brewed in 50 countries, marketed in some 150 and united mainly by the name

Guinness. Apart from the universal use of the Guinness name, there were wide local variations in

the way Guinness was positioned in those markets. The advertising was carried out country by

country, and there was very little consistency in Guinnesss marketing approach. Did this matter?

Jon Potter and his Guinness brand team thought it did, and no doubt the Saxon tendencies within

the company appreciated the opportunities for cost savings if Guinness could take a more global

approach to marketing.

Jon Potter, however, was sensitive to the storytelling resonances of the Guinness brand. He

appreciated that Guinness was lovedin different ways in different marketsbecause it touched

some universal emotions in its drinkers. He felt instinctively that the way to connect with

Guinness people was by engaging them with Guinness stories. So he asked me first to research and

find, and then to write, the stories that had built the Guinness brand. These were the stories of the

people who, at critical points in Guinnesss history, had courage and took bold decisions that

proved turning points for Guinness. Jons intuition was that these stories would provide evidence

to support the definition of brand essence that he had finally agreed with the global marketing

community. He defined that essence as: Guinness reflects your inner strength.

12 SIMMONS

I spent enjoyable hours and days researching Guinness stories with my colleague Mark Griffiths

(2004). We settled on a number of stories of particular significance and I wrote a short version of

the first one to establish the storytelling tone of voice.

The story starts with the expletives deleted. We dont need to sanctify the memory of our founder but

no one ever recorded the swear words Arthur Guinness flung across the barricades at the gentlemen

from the Dublin Corporation in 1775. But fling them he did.

The temptation is to describe Arthur Guinness as a stout gentleman. Well, we make no point about his

girth but we do know that Arthur Guinness took his time before he came around to brewing porter.

When he finally did it, it was worth waiting for.

But it was water that did it. The whole history of Guinness is built on water.

Think of that the next time you sink a pint. If Arthur hadnt made his first stand against the bureaucrats

and stood up for his commercial rights we wouldnt be here now thinking of new ways to fight the

Guinness cause.

I did a deal, dammit, so lets stick to it!

Arthur stuck to it. It took him twelve years to win his fight for the Dublin water rights, but he won.

And that was the first crucial turning point in the story of Guinness.

It takes strength to do it. Not necessarily the girder-lifting strength of a strong man, but the

commitment that comes with an inner certainty.

Think about it. Savour it. And lift your glass to Arthur.

We owe it to him.

In the best traditions of the Brand Bard I presented this story by reading it aloud to Jon

Potter. Despite a fire alarm interruption he liked the story when he heard it in full. So

he encouraged me to carry on with the storytelling. Mark Griffiths and I dug deeper into the

archives in Park Royal and Dublin, and we wrote the six stories that became Believe, six turning

points for Guinness that hinged on inner strength (Simmons and Griffiths, 2001). The six stories

were:

The Founders Tale

Arthur Guinness and the companys early years

The Toucans Real Tale

Ben Newbold and Guinnesss first venture into advertising

The Draughtsmans Tale

Michael Ash and the invention of Draught Guinness

The Travellers Tale

Alan Lennox-Boyd and overseas expansion

The Widgets Tale

Alan Forage and the development of the device that made canned Draught Guinness possible

The Marketers Tale

Alan Wood in the 1960s and David Hampshire for Guinness in Africa (Simmons, 2003).

Each story was told in a few thousand words, so these were not glib soundbites, and they were not

examples of advertising copywriting. They were genuine storytelling, built around characters,

locations, decisive moments in narratives. The book of stories was produced originally for a

STRATEGIC STORYTELLING 13

global brand summit that would gather marketing teams from all Guinness markets around the

world. Unfortunately 9/11 intervened at another decisive moment and the summit was

postponed but the book was distributed.

The idea of storytelling had lodged itself in Jon Potters thinking. He remarked, Sometimes we

forget that brands have stories to tell and are, in fact, stories themselves. We continued to build on

this insight about storytelling, recognising that it was a powerful way to convey messages that were

sometimes difficult, often abstract. They provided a connection between Guinnesss past, its rich

heritage that everyone loved but hardly anyone knew, and its present and future. As a way to

represent this ability to look both back and forward through storytelling, we established regular

(weekly to fortnightly) emails to the global marketing community. We called these 1759 emails:

1759 being the date that the company was originally founded and 17:59 being the moment on a 24-

hour clock on a Friday that people got ready to leave the office for the weekend. At that moment

we gave them a 17:59 email that looked back at an event of the previous week and drew a thought

to consider over the following week. By drawing on stories from all around the world, the emails

helped to create a stronger and more united marketing community. Here are a couple of examples.

Example 1

Sometimes the big idea takes very little time. All this started as a bar conversation in Tokyo, small talk

leading to big thinking that we called Flea. Actually Flea was the child of another big idea called Zou

(meaning elephant). If all this mixing of scale and species seems strangely surreal, dont worry, the

reality is an amazing example of innovation. Let us explain.

The idea was Todds and he expressed it to Jon Potter and Peter Fairbrother over an inevitable

Guinness in a Japanese bar. It was really about getting closer to consumers; literally closer. Here we had

a fantastic piece of innovation, the Zou surger unit, designed to sit on the bar counter. Amazing. Pats

on backs all round. But what if, Todd said, we brought a small version of it right onto the customers

table? Surge and serve, all before your eyes.

A great idea shouldnt have to wait, so Jon emailed Steve Wilson thousands of miles and several time

zones away. An hour, and a couple of emails later, the message came back we love it too, were on the

case. Two months after that the first working model stood proudly on the table. And next, in April,

were heading for the commercial launch in Japan.

Big or small, elephant or flea, what matters is the quality of the idea. Then turning that idea into reality

quickly. It helps too if youre inspired by enthusiasm like Todds. We all respond to that kind of

passionincluding our customers. Theyre like you and me: they love to see evidence that were

thinking of them.

Example 2

Sometimes you need to face facts. Actually you need to do that all the time. Fact 1: many people dont

like the taste of Guinness. Fact 2: tough!

So lets face facts and be true to ourselves. Thats the line the South African team took when

introducing, New Guinness ES. The less preferred beer. With a campaign created by Saatchi &

Saatchi, they came out loud and proud and said youre either with us or youre not. The cheeky,

irreverent campaign featured a Complaints Hotline on radio ads and messages like 0.34% of beer

drinkers cant be wrong on billboards. It made people laugh, and it made people talk. And it

recognised that Guinness is an acquired taste.

It was just a case of meeting the barriers to drinking Guinness head-on. Which then happened to turn

into 22,000 cases of Guinness ES, 40% over target. And everyone found it liberating, as well as a

phenomenal success. Because Guinness isnt for everyone, lets be honest. Only for people with taste.

14 SIMMONS

As the billboard ad said, Joe Bloggs hated it. Want one? Good for you. And who wants to be Joe

Bloggs?

Storytelling became the natural mode for Guinnesss tone of voice while Jon Potter remained

global brand director. Whether in the form of books, emails, videos, research documents, we

aimed to tell stories rather than simply to give factual information. But of course, there was

another stream of internal communication, another business imperative that was about hitting

targets and achieving numbers. Any business has to convey this information, and Guinness was no

different. What was different was that we found different vehicles for the communication.

Modelling the title on GIGFY (Guinness is good for you, an important phrase and acronym from

Guinnesss past) we created BIGFY where the B stands for Believing (an important word from

Guinnesss present). BIGFY was an electronic news letter that communicated information about

performance after each meeting of the global brand executive. It was full of numbers but still

managed to tell a story.

As part of Diageo, Guinness is not in independent control of its own destiny. Like other big

corporations, Diageo looks at its business and makes rational decisions about teams and structures,

operations and locations. At the beginning of 2004 Diageo took a number of significant decisions

affecting Guinness. It decided to close its London brewery at Park Royal and transfer its UK beer-

making to Dublin where they now had spare capacity. Following on from this it decided to

relocate its global brand team to Dublin too. In many ways this was a strange decision in

marketing terms, because Guinness has become less and less a purely Irish brand. Indeed in many

developed markets its Irishness is a limitation, particularly when blond continental lagers are the

drinks of cool choice for young people. Ireland is a stagnant market for Guinness, and achieving

growth there an increasingly difficult task. By contrast, Africa is a booming market to which

Diageo looks for growth in Guinness. The expectation is that within the next four to five years

Nigeria will become the worlds No.1 market for Guinness. In the new allocation of marketing

responsibilities Jon Potter was moved from a focus on the Guinness brand to Commercial

Director for Diageo Africa.

Planning for this to happen, and keen to pass on a healthy legacy through storytelling to his

successors on the Guinness brand, Jon involved me in a final project. His last meeting of the

global brand executive was scheduled for Dublin in May 2004 and Jon wanted something to hand

over as a passing of the baton. He had no idea whatexcept he felt there was a clue in a little

bottle he showed me. This bottle contained the product essence of Guinness. Product essence,

brand essence, how could we link the two ideas that seemed to be reaching out to each other

through this shared word essence? The answer, it seemed, was to send me on a journey to

Dublin to meet Seamus McGardle, Beverage Blending Agents Director. It was refreshing to talk

to Seamus. He is not a marketing man, but he knows all there is to know about controlling the

quality of Guinness. In a very mysterious way he knows the secrets of Guinness and the

ingredients that make it what it is. Those ingredients are distilled to make Guinness Flavour

Extract, GFE, a pure, concentrated essence of Guinness that is used to provide consistent flavour

and colour to Guinness wherever it is drunk in the world. This is the secret in the little bottle that

Jon Potter had shown me. GFE is shipped in much bigger quantities to all the countries where

Guinness is brewed. It enables Guinness to be brewed not just in Ireland but in nearly 50

countries worldwide, and to have consistent flavour (Simmons, 2004).

Having met Seamus and heard his tale, I decided to write a book of stories that would unite

these two ideas of essence: the product and the brand. The narrative theme of inner strength

provided the framework for the stories. But how could I approach it?

STRATEGIC STORYTELLING 15

I decided that I would use the archetypal story of the quest. The quest would be to find the real

essence of Guinness. I needed characters: a narrator who would be an innocent abroad, in search

of the essence, drawing on the help of his inner resources and of other characters encountered

along the way. The plot would involve the central character travelling to twelve different

countries in a round-the-world journey, before returning to Dublin. By the time he returned, as

a result of the wisdom gained from his experiences in the different places, the narrator would

have a deeper knowledge of the brand essenceand would be entrusted with the product essence

too.

This worked for Guinness. I set 12 different themes to explore through the 12 stories; the

themes were all aspects of inner strength. For example, here is the story set in Cameroon:

You step off the plane and its like stepping into a steam bath. Id flown in from Paris and now here I

was in Douala, Cameroon.

Avancez, was the instruction.

Keep moving forward was the way I translated it to myself. I joined the queue of people making for

the arrivals hall and the baggage carousel.

Avancez, avancez.

So thats what I did, through passport control, baggage hall and Customs.

Whats the purpose of your visit?

Guinness, I replied.

Avancez.

An unbelievable jostle of people, all competing for a share of my custom. But Id already declared my

purpose. Guinness, I said, and the taxi driver smiled.

He drove me at a speed that seemed more than the car or the road could live with. But he kept going

through the blackness outside while my knuckles clenched white inside. The journey was short and

fast.

Downtown Douala was teeming with people, noise and colour. I paid the driver, stepped out onto the

road and straight into the bar. My eyes couldnt take in the mixture of blazing light and murky dark,

but my legs kept me moving forward. I wasnt sure where I was heading but I knew what I had to do.

At the back, in the heaving throng, I found the counter and the barman. He took the cap off the bottle

for me, my first Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. A big bottle, it seemed to speak with a voice of power.

Drink, it said. Enjoy. The foreign will soon seem familiar. Keep moving forward.

The narrator starts his quest in Ireland, then travels to the UK, France, Cameroon, Nigeria, South

Africa, Singapore, Australia, Japan, USA, Jamaica and back to Ireland. Each chapter has a different

theme which is explored through a story of a few hundred words. So the starting point for each

storyand the final words for each storyis a phrase that explores a different aspect of inner

strength. Be true to yourself, for example, or keep your focus.

I had everything mapped out in my mind but I was stuck for a way to round it all off. The

stories needed a natural conclusion. I felt the conclusion needed to be set in Dublin, bringing the

stories in a circular way back to where we had started. But beyond that I was short of inspiration.

Something magical happened to provide the inspiration. Having visited Seamus McGardle

again in Dublin, I was left with a couple of hours to kill before catching my plane back to

London. I walked from St James Gate brewery to the centre of Dublin. Trinity College was in

16 SIMMONS

front of me, a place I had visited before. I decided to wander in again to look around. As I

wandered through the gates I noticed a poster of an exhibition called, Turning Darkness into

Light. The exhibition was for the Book of Kells, the illuminated manuscript created by medieval

Irish monks. It was almost as if a shaft of light had lit my way. Earlier that week Guinness had

launched a new advertising campaign whose end line was: Out of Darkness comes Light. I knew

I had the conclusion to my story. It went like this:

Id been around the world, seeking the absolute essence of Guinness. And now I was back where I

started, in Dublin again, and needing to report on what Id found. Had I found enlightenment?

I wasnt sure. The experiences Id had all gave insights into the essence of the Guinness brand. Id

discovered a strength inside myself that I didnt know I had. But was there more?

I found myself at Trinity College and decided to go through the gates. There were lots of people

milling about inside, most of them students in between classes. A poster caught my eye. It read: The

Book of Kells. Turning Darkness into Light. This sounded promising so I followed the sign.

The Book of Kells is an ancient book, the gospels handwritten and lavishly decorated over 1000 years ago

by Irish monks. Its an object of great beauty and value, and I looked at it in wonder. Then I went up the

stairs to the Long Room of the library. I didnt know why but my quest seemed to be pointing me there.

Along both walls were shelves of antique books. The wisdom of the ages was here. Just to my right was

a beautifully carved harp, made in the 15th century. I realised suddenly that I was alone in this vast,

gloomy and atmospheric room.

But then a voice spoke to me from behind the harp. The figure who spoke was in shadow and I could

not see his face properly.

Take this, he said to me, holding a tiny bottle towards me. Its the essence of Guinness, natural, pure

and concentrated. We make this to provide flavour, colour and bite to every Guinness that is drunk

anywhere in the world. There is a secret to it, known to very few, but the secret goes back deep into

history, and it gets passed on to those who are keepers of the essence. As long as the secret survives and

the essence is made well, Guinness will thrive.

I reached out and took the little bottle in my hand. Inside was a thick black liquid. I was awestruck by

what I had been given.

That is the essence of Guinness itself, the beer that we drink, the beer that we have drunk since 1759,

the shadowy figure continued. We cannot make Guinness without it. But there is another essence we

need to have and understand, and that is just as important. This essence is a strength you feel inside you.

Its something you can draw on at any time.

I know, I said. Ive been feeling it but I didnt know what it was.

The responsibility is yours now, he continued. Yours and your colleagues. It can seem a heavy

challenge but you need to rise to it, as others have for nearly 250 years. You are now a keeper of the

essence.

I held the bottle up to the light that was now streaming in through the window. The sunshine gleamed

through the dark liquid and suddenly the room too seemed bright. I looked at the harp, believing I had

heard it sound, but now I saw no figure standing behind it. I was alone again in the room. Had I

dreamed what I had just seen and heard?

I walked along the room, looking to right and left but seeing no one. A book was on display, exhibiting

a poem by an ancient Irish monk, perhaps one of the scribes for the Book of Kells. He wrote about his

life and that of his cat Pangur, and this is his conclusion:

STRATEGIC STORYTELLING 17

Practice every day has made

Pangur perfect in his trade;

I get wisdom day and night

Turning darkness into light.

If I had imagined the figure, the essence in the bottle was real. It was in my hand. But I felt too that I

had found another essence inside myself, that connected to similar feelings in the people I had met on

my journey. This was something we shared and something we needed to nurture.

I walked down the stairs and out into the daylight. The world outside was alive with energy and

excitement. I felt it was time for a Guinness.

The book of stories (the brand essence), together with a little bottle of GFE (the product essence)

was handed over by Jon Potter to the members of the new global brand executive. Whether the

new team become Celts or Saxons only time will tell.

Whether I am a Celt or a Saxon is easy enough for you to tell. I believe in the power of

storytelling (see Denning, 1998). It can illuminate marketing strategies, it can bring them to life so

that people understand them emotionally as well as intellectually. We do not allow our emotions

to express themselves enough during our working life. This is a theme I explore in Dark Angels

(Simmons, 2004), a Celtic title if ever I heard one. My thesis there is that we all are creative

beings, but often our creativity is suppressed by our work environment or by personal inhibitions.

I am firmly on the side of the angels, the dark angels, the ones who love words and stories and use

them to lift everyday tasks of communication beyond the ordinary. To allow their words to soar

off the page, or out of the screen, and lodge themselves memorably in the lives and imaginations

of their readers. What better role could there ever be for marketing?

REFERENCES

Denning, S. (1998) The Springboard, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Griffiths, M. (2004) Guinness is Guinness: The Colourful Story of a Black and White Brand, London: Cyan

Books.

Ogilvy, D. (1986) The Unpublished David Ogilvy, London: Sidgwick & Jackson.

Simmons, J. (2000) We, Me, Them & It: The Power of Words in Business, London: Texere. New edition, Cyan

Books 2006.

Simmons, J. (2003) The Invisible Grail: In Search of the True Language of Brands, London: Texere. New edition,

Cyan Books 2006.

Simmons, J. (2004) Dark Angels: How Writing Releases Creativity at Work, London: Cyan Books.

Simmons, J. and Griffiths, M. (2001) Believe. Internal book published by Guinness, one chapter reproduced

in J. Simmons (2003) The Invisible Grail: In Search of the True Language of Brands, London: Texere.

18 SIMMONS