SEOUL – Despite Guinness’ global recognition, this Diageo brand is yet to catch the hearts of South Korean beer drinkers and penetrate its market.
Seeking the help of creative agency iris, Diageo launched a category transforming idea and campaign that would expand trial and distribution of the brand within both the on and off trade.
“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,” said Dougal McGeorge, Marketing & Innovation Director, Diageo Korea.
“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.”
#TasteofBlack is a fully integrated campaign that aims to shun the Korean’s perception of Guinness’ black color as having an overly strong and challenging taste, and instead introduce its smooth, deep, creamy, bold, rich and amazing taste and flavor.
With the help of production company The Sweet Shop, under renowned director John S. Park, iris kicked off the campaign with a category disruptive TV film exploring the six key distinctive tastes and flavors.
“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, & share their experience,” commented Christopher Lyons, Managing Director, iris.
“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.”
The film will be supported by other components including digital, social media, on and off trade POSM and consumer/trade promotional activity.
