How Guinness became cool
A different kind of newsletter this month
I’m gonna chat about Guinness now.
Guinness is having a cool moment. And not that Extra Cold shite. But it wasn’t always that way. As much as we wouldn’t want to admit it, it’s a result of Diageo’s marketing over the years.
A young lad in an old man’s pub.
I worked in a pub from 2007 at the naive age of 18. There will be sections of this deep dive that are going to come off as “I was cool before everyone else”. I don’t mean it to come across this way, but it’s through my optics that I want to frame this all.
The pub I worked in would have been considered an old man’s pub, meaning it had very few people drinking there regularly who were under 40. My parents don’t drink, so I never spent any time around pubs as a child. And yes, in 90s/00s Ireland, children were in pubs fairly regularly during the daytime! So it was in this pub that I was introduced to Guinness. It was easily the most popular pint there, and it was all men over 40 who drank it. They were full of the usual nonsense statements like;
“The Guinness is flowing well today”
“Has anyone been on the Guinness today? I’m not drinking the first pint”
“Ah that pint has gone off, will you check the keg?”
Utter shitetalk.
But anyway, it did make me want to check out what the fuss was about. At that time, I was drinking cider and cheap beer. As I imagine most people were at 18. So I started pouring myself some Guinness pints at the end of the night (it was allowed!) and gave it a go.
The verdict?
Heavy but ok.
I didn’t hate it, but it really is something you have to push through to start liking. And to be fair, I did, and still do like it today. However, it was very much only me who was drinking it in my friend circle, and few jokes were made about it. Fair, but ironic now as they “know where the best Guinness is” in Dublin.
I can’t remember much about how Guinness was marketed around this time, other than the usual “cool” ads like this. Great ads, but not young people focused as they became in later years. Guinness was a legacy brand, with an older base that was fiercely loyal.
Arthur’s Day 2009
Mention Arthur’s Day to an Irish person and they’ll probably shudder. What started out as a fun marketing gimmick* to mark 250 years of St James Gate brewery had descended into, to put it lightly, a fucking mess by the last year.
For the first year, everyone got hyped, ‘cause well, free pints! I remember being in Dublin city centre that day, and the place was rammed for a Thursday. The hook was that everyone would get a free pint just before 6pm in order to raise a pint to Arthur. Technically it was at 17:59, as a result of this marketing campaign playing off the year Guinness took over St James Gate Brewery, 1759.
The first Arthur’s Day was a massive success. People, and a lot of them aged 18-30, got involved and had their first pint of Guinness. Having it all happen on a Thursday at 6pm showed that they were looking for a younger crowd than usual. No waiting for the weekend here. My main memory from that day is people taking their sip of Guinness at 17:59, and then not taking another. Many, practically full, pints left untouched after the toast. The Guinness drinkers in a group probably didn’t put their hand in their pocket at all that day. The pint might have been poured hours ago, but it was free!
It went so well in fact that Guinness, or more accurately Diageo, decided it would be an annual event. I’m not gonna do a full write up of the Arthur’s Day decline, but it was last held in 2013 and by that stage most people had a very negative perception of it. But it opened the James Gate for a lot of people into Guinnness…
*Is it redundant to call marketing a gimmick cause, isn’t that the point?
2013 - You can’t tell Beamish from Guinness.
With people drinking Guinness for years you’d think they’d be able to taste the difference with another stout. You’d be dead wrong. It was 2013, and I was back again working in a pub in Dublin city centre. This bar only stocked Heineken products, so no Guinness here as that’s owned by Diageo. Naturally, people would come in looking for Guinness. It’s a pub in Dublin, why wouldn’t it have it? When I told them we didn’t have it, you’d swear I’d told them puppies didn’t exist. Grown men were left vacant husks as their brains couldn’t come up with any other drink to order. More often than not, it seemed cider was the next choice. Not the other stout, Beamish.
After a few months, I got sick of telling people we didn’t have Guinness and I’d just pour them a Beamish. The glasses weren’t branded so there was no obvious giveaway. And you know what? Most people never knew any different. They never came back with “this Guinness tastes different” or “there is no way this is a Guinness”. They slurped in silence on their Beamish, never the wiser. This isn’t a dig at Beamish. It’s lovely. No, this is all to say that people were loyal to the brand of Guinness, not the taste.
“New age fun with a vintage feel.”
Guinness is now an acceptable drink for young people. Gen Z love it. It’s a simple beer, but has been elevated to connoisseur levels of praise. There could be so many hot takes as to why this is the reason.
Maybe it was a result of the oversaturation of craft beers that took over the 2010’s. The snobbery that came from that probably turned a lot of people away from craft beers.
I’ve also read that with fine dining now being outrageously expensive, Guinness has become a surrogate for discerning tastes among certain people. You have to know where the best pint is poured, how you think it should be poured, and the signs of a good one. “X does the best Guinness in Dublin/London/Cumbernauld” People will ask each other if the Guinness is good. I can’t think of any other beer that people would be bothered asking that about. In a world where young people have so little that they can call their own, maybe we can afford them this small comfort.
But among the cool young creatives, there is always a desire to appear less well off than they are. And Guinness offers the aesthetic of “I’m informed but not bothered” vibes. Making Guinness their personality makes them feel down to earth. Some think being working class is an aesthetic choice. Multiple studies have shown that it’s near impossible for people from working class backgrounds to break into the creative industry. Yet agencies and creatives are desperate to emulate this background. Easy solution, hire more people from working class backgrounds.
But at this point, it would be silly of me to not say; Guinness just tastes nice. For all the cult following it has, good and bad, it’s not without merit. It’s my go to pint, and that’s probably never going to change.
But splitting the G can get to fuck.
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Thanks for coming on this different type of newletter with me. I wanted to try do more of a deep dive on the rise of Guinness in terms of marketing but I ran out of steam.