The strategy has not changed in the 21st Century, but the message has, slightly, for our more health-conscious times. Guinness is actually a lower-calorie alcoholic beverage, containing fewer calories than a same-sized serving of Michelob Lite.
Guinness is lower in calories, alcohol and carbohydrates than Heineken, Samuel Adams and Budweiser. And how about this? It’s also lower in calories and carbohydrates than a glass of orange juice.
This is a message that Diageo, Guinness’ parent company, has seized on as a means of extending the drink’s appeal to a larger market of drinkers, what Diageo’s director of trade relations North America, Connie Doolan, calls “the non-committed drinker,” or, with his ear attuned to one of the buzzwords of election year 2004, “the swing drinker,” like some voters, as yet unsure of what to have when they look to make their choice.
Nor are such claims lightly made. Diageo, like all food and beverage suppliers, must have its products approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which tests such claims assiduously.
Revealing a careful and thoughtful strategy behind its search for new customers, Doolan told how Diageo recently surveyed not the traditional markets where Guinness already has a committed following, but other parts of the U.S.
“We purposely kept away from major markets like New York City, Chicago and Washington D.C., looking instead for the mean average market,” he said.
“We got a good cross-section of the 22- to 35-year-old market, one of our particular target groups,” Doolan continued. He noted that Guinness’s heritage has served it far better than any marketing ploy, creating an instant appeal in the minds of many uncommitted drinkers as well as the feeling of a brand that could be trusted to tell the consumer the truth about itself.
Historically, Guinness first came to the U.S. in 1856, imported by the McMullan brothers of New York City. But it took a 60-year hiatus after the 1910s, disrupted by the Great War, Prohibition and the Great Depression, then another war.
It was 1964 when Guinness returned, finding itself anew in the New World, with several generations of drinkers unaccustomed to the drink, even some of the Irish ones.
Doolan lets testimonials speak for the drink. Occasionally in “say, a high-class restaurant in Minnesota or Los Angeles” you will be told, “oh, but that’s just an Irish drink,” at which point he can refer to testimonials from hospitality staff from the Waldorf-Astoria downward.
Besides the new message that Guinness is a drink that can be consumed with due regard to one’s health, the brand continues to enjoy its enduring Irish mystique.
Doolan likes to tell the story of a group of four friends who entered a bar and were offered four pints of Guinness before they had time to order. How come?
“The bar man said, ‘You looked like Guinness drinkers.’ And what does that mean? ‘You look notches above the rest,’ ” he explained.
This fall, fans of Guinness’ zany commercials can look forward to several new ones, including two new versions of the “Brilliant!” series with their rich vein of Irish humor.
As more and more people are turned on to Guinness (surveys show 60 percent of viewers remember that Guinness is a low-calorie beverage and two-thirds say they find the drink more appealing after watching a commercial), it is still the case that the Irish remain highly opinionated about Guinness.
So what about that constant lament you hear from some Guinness drinkers that Guinness in North America is nothing like the pint so-and-so pulls in such-and-such’s bar?
Doolan readily agreed that the Guinness aficionado will have a highly developed and unique sense of taste and experience about them that is only to be expected. But Guinness throughout North America is powered out of the keg by the same mix of gas — “about 25 percent Co2 to a 75 percent nitro mix,” wherever you go, guaranteed.
“We protect that like a precious gem,” he said.