The Sweet Shop’s director John S. Park shoots Guinness’ #TasteOfBlack campaign via iris Seoul

The Sweet Shop director John S. Park has recently shot a new campaign for Guinness out of iris, Seoul.

Guinness, as one of Diageo’s biggest global brands enjoys a brand loyalty and love around the world that most beers could only dream of.

VIEW THE SPOT

However, in South Korea the bulk of the beer market presently lies in non-descript local lagers. Guinness – while being well established and having a vibrant business there already – is still in relative terms a small player. As such Diageo needed a category transforming idea and campaign that would help expand trial and distribution of the brand within both the on and off trade, and importantly build further interest (and love) across a broader section of drinkers in Korea.

With a huge focus on bars and supermarkets, Diageo turned to iris to help get the ‘liquid on lips’; position the brand to a wider audience – and to express the first time experience of drinking Guinness.

#TasteofBlack is a fully integrated campaign – with participation at its core – that tackles the main barrier for those Koreans who have not yet tried Guinness – the perception of an overly strong or challenging taste, provoked by its black colour. Rather than just using a triple-A celebrity to stand with the drink to encourage purchase, iris focused on calling out six key distinctive (and Korean drinker articulated) taste and flavour characteristics of Guinness – smooth, deep, creamy, bold, rich and amazing – encouraging and provoking drinkers to (re)consider Guinness, propose their own description of the taste or flavour and then share their experience.

Using Park, and working closely with The Sweet Shop, iris launched the campaign with a beautifully crafted and category disruptive TV film that explores the six key taste and flavour characteristics through dramatic artist impressions. The film is supported by a full participation platform including digital, social media, on and off trade POSM and consumer/trade promotional activity.

The campaign includes an influencer programme with three of Korea’s biggest opinion leaders, who also featured in the film, to create their own content based on their own #TasteofBlack experience, which will feature on their respective YouTube channels.

Says Dougal McGeorge, marketing and innovation director, Diageo Korea: “Over the past 5+ years, Diageo Korea has done a great job of ‘seeding’ the Guinness brand at the top end of the beer market in Korea, leading to it becoming one of the most premium positioned and admired international beer brands in the market. Our challenge from this point, is to kick-off the next step of the journey. To do this we needed to make a step-change in the way we communicate about and activate Guinness, and as such we sought a partner who could help us to do this. In iris we found both a strategically strong and creatively gifted team, with a great can-do attitude and proactivity, which enabled us jointly to develop and execute this striking new campaign in a remarkably short time frame, overcoming a number of complexities and challenges along the way.”

Says Christopher Lyons, managing director, iris: “Agencies and clients often talk about being category disruptive. I believe this campaign truly does just that. It is a testament to the Diageo Korea Guinness brand team and the team at iris who had a bold ambition to engage consumers, drive participation, and create a platform – not just a campaign – so that consumers could engage with Guinness, participate with the work, and share their experience. Participation is the lifeblood of the idea, and as one of our first campaigns to launch in Seoul, this work shows just what we can achieve in this incredibly interesting marketplace.”

Shaun Mcilrath – Global Creative Director

MJ Cho – Senior Brand Manager, Guinness, (Diageo Korea)