Situation: despite being celebrated and enjoyed world-wide, Guinness in China was only favored by less than 0.1% of the people due the unfamiliarity of the beer’s appearance which is very different from the commonly seen golden lager.

Brief: attract sophisticated consumers in China with high income to go beyond the visual barrier and buy Guinness via creating brand awareness and product desirability in a premium way.

Objectives: increase brand awareness and sales volume of Guinness in China.

Budget: around 1 million USD

Scale and volume: all across China with focus on key cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and so on.

Because we were talking to a group of highly sophisticated consumers who have good income, good taste and appreciate the finer things in life, plus the clients wanted to position Guinness as a premium brand in China, we decided to create a campaign with aesthetics, imagination and craftsmanship instead of another funny beer ad.

Hence the idea, A Whole Universe, capturing the Guinness' unique and iconic surging moments that resembles astronomical phenomena to create a visual odyssey, showing there's a whole universe's richness and complexity in every one of Guinness, allured our target audience with elegance and sophistication.

By leveraging the style of liquid art and conceptual photography, we first took shots of the beer liquid of Guinness and selected the ones that look like astronomical phenomena such as the Black Hole, the Solar Storm and so on.

Then we designed a series of posters and an artful mini film to honestly yet aesthetically show that every Guinness is so rich and complex that it looks like there’s a whole universe in it.

Other than paid media all across China like billboards, screens and digital banners, these assets were also adapted into an art exhibition in downtown Shanghai, decor for bars and pubs, various branded experiences as well.

393% sales volume increase

34.8 million media impressions

Used only real Guinness liquid during the shoot and post-production without the common usage of CGI and special props like baking soda in beer ads.