This is the story of how a 264-year-old brand, known as an ‘old man’s drink’, harnessed the power of two of the hottest contemporary musical artists, and became cool again.

Guinness is an iconic brand, especially with 35y/o+ drinkers.

However, legacy brand associations - cosy winter pubs and sports - don’t always resonate with younger consumers.

So, to recruit more 18–34-year-olds, we needed to increase consideration of Guinness as a contemporary, light-hearted, and fun brand.

How?

By creating a brand-funded TV show which broke all conventions of typical brand-funded TV shows.

No cringe product placement, awkward brand integrations, or forced dialogue here!

Just two best mates on the road trip of a lifetime, doing what they do best – chatting, drinking and having the craic.

And our audience, tired of cliched brand ads masquerading as ‘content’, lapped it up, creating a cultural moment that resonated far beyond the Irish borders!

To change 18-34 perceptions of Guinness, we needed a BIG idea.

There are loads of Irish artists who’ve achieved global fame, like U2, Sinead O’Connor and Westlife, but none resonated enough with our younger demo.

But there IS one artist with both a global profile AND youth appeal – former One Direction star Niall Horan.

However, we knew our audience are very wary of inauthentic brand badging.

And so ‘Niall Horan’s Homecoming’, was born, a brand-new Guinness-funded TV special.

The show featured Horan returning to Ireland to go on the musical road trip of a lifetime with best mate, platinum-selling Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, with the two visiting cultural landmarks (and a pub or two!).

Instead of charging the brand for airtime, Ireland’s biggest TV channels fought over the rights to air the show, with Virgin Media One beating national broadcaster RTE, giving us a coveted prime-time Sunday evening slot.

Our campaign kicked off with a tightly orchestrated ‘leak’ of the news that Horan and Capaldi would be busking on Dublin’s famous Grafton Street, garnering huge local and global coverage.

We built further anticipation by harnessing the artists’ extensive social media reach to publicise their involvement in the show.

This was supplemented with a robust paid, earned, and owned media campaign which ensured that it wasn’t just Guinness celebrating the content, but our artists, broadcasters, and prominent Irish influencers.

The result? ‘Homecoming’ truly felt like an intrinsic part of the culture, not just another brand campaign.

Following its premiere, we negotiated for ‘Homecoming’ to feature in the hugely popular Diageo-sponsored TV show Gogglebox, with Googleboxers enjoying the black stuff whilst watching and discussing a Guinness-produced show.

But its success didn’t stop there! After its premiere, ‘Homecoming’ was picked up by Amazon Prime Video for distribution across 9 other markets

Campaign was an outstanding success, mixing entertaining content with a robust and effective media plan to produce an iconic cultural moment.

• 89% of Irish 18–34-year-olds reached

• 83% of those aware of the show thought Guinness was light-hearted, fun, and sociable (Kantar).

• Paid media reached 86% of 18+ including Guinness Ireland’s first YouTube masthead, Twitter notification and Amazon Prime activation.

• The Sunday night premiere over-performed standard slot ratings by 130%

• #guinnesshomecoming trended in Ireland (and globally).

• Earned media generated a unique reach of 30million+ globally.

• Guinness Ireland saw a 125% conversation increase vs. its highest talkability peak of 2022.

• Brand gained cultural vibrancy and fresh energy that resonated with 78% of consumers who watched the show.

The best bit?

Of Ireland’s top five beer brands, Guinness was the biggest recruiter of 18-34-year-old drinks during the campaign (Nielsen).

Sláinte!