MMA Case Study: Guinness St. Pat’s )Marvellous)
The brief
Guinness asked Marvellous to develop a campaign to engage drinkers in the lead up to St. Patrick’s Day 2008, one of the biggest party days of the year for Guinness consumption. The campaign had to have credibility and longevity beyond 17 March to justify investment, and therefore had to be flexible enough to work across several of Guinness’s marketing programmes.
Objectives
Guinness wanted to connect with its customers, and get them involved with the brand on a deeper level than straightforward consumption. By providing them with innovative on-brand planning tools and entertainment, the mobile campaign created “talkability” and encouraged fun, interaction and banter in the pub and beyond. Guinness also wanted to use the campaign to promote its new product, Guinness Red, and introduce it to traditional Guinness drinkers and the wider market.
Strategy
The Guinness target audience of sport- and style-aware 18-40 year olds is completely at home with mobile technology, and relaxed about sophisticated digital interaction. Their handsets are always on, always with them, and tend to be high end. Consequently, Marvellous proposed a range of Java downloads to deliver cutting edge brand engagement which would live on the phone and be returned to many times.
Solution
Marvellous created a mobile destination site, accessed via calls to action in press, radio, online and mobile media. The site was designed to reflect and enhance the brand values of Guinness, and bring these to a new and always-available medium.
Apart from basic information about Guinness and its products, the site housed several applications, including:
Pubfinder – this enables users to identify pubs via LBS, postcode or area look-up. It can also find the nearest St. Pat’s party pub, the nearest one with sports TV, or the nearest one serving Guinness Red. Many pubs are independently reviewed and photographed and this database is being extended all the time. Because the Pubfinder is a java download, the data can be dynamically refreshed on the handset, keeping it up to date and relevant.
119.5 Pub Quiz – a selection of four java quizzes where consumers answer as many questions as possible in 119.5 seconds, the time it takes to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. They could then submit their scores to a national leaderboard, also accessible via Facebook, with great Irish prizes for the top scorer.
Picture Gallery – St. Pat’s party-goers were asked to send in their photos of the celebrations to the special shortcode, 81703. There they could view their own, their friends’ and a random selection of all photos submitted. Again, the photographs could also be viewed on the Guinness Facebook pages.
Results
The results were spectacular for a short-term )2-week) campaign, and far exceeded the KPIs set by the client. More than 30% of the 35,000+ unique users downloaded at least one of the Java applications, with the quizzes proving particularly popular.
The results also proved the effectiveness of clickthrough ads on mobile portals, which delivered fantastic ROI compared to more traditional channels. Research into the effectiveness of the mobile media banners conducted for Vodafone live! by Dynamic Logic showed a 25% lift in mobile ad awareness, 12% lift in brand favourability, and a 9% rise in purchase intent, with a 3% clickthrough rate in certain areas.
Next Steps
Working with Marvellous, Guinness has updated the St. Pat's campaign site into a permanent mobile presence. The site is now promoted in much of their above the line media and Guinness has committed to include mobile in future campaigns.
