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 & Francis
http://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