Guinness

The Product

Guinness has been brewed in Dublin since 1759 when it was begun by Arthur Guinness and in Ireland it is the best selling alcoholic drink of all time!
However, this tasty Irish drink is not only enjoyed by the Irish, its popularity spreads the world over and as a result has become an iconic symbol of Ireland throughout many continents such as Europe, Africa and Australasia.
Guinness’ fame and popularity is of course down to the high quality product itself but it must also be attributed to the way the brand has been marketed. A huge part of marketing is ADVERTISING and a high quality product needs some high quality advertising.

Advertising

Advertising is part of the overall marketing strategy of a business as effective advertising can play a crucial part in creating a successful money making business.
Guinness is famous for producing some excellent advertising campaigns over the years which come in all shapes and sizes, including posters and beer mats to award-winning television commercials.
In 2000 one television advert in particular, Surfer, was named ‘The Best Television Commercial of All Time’ in a UK poll carried out by Channel 4 and The Sunday Times. For those of you that aren’t sure, it’s the one where surfers attempt to ride a wave of galloping horses to a pounding backing track from Leftfield.

Here comes the science bit…

Now we all know that white horses don’t really appear at the forefront of huge rolling waves, ‘so how was it done’ I hear you ask? Well that’s where technology comes in. Originally the whole sequence was to be computer generated, but the advertising agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and the director Jonathan Glazer (the man behind the moving room in Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity video), decided to mix together reality and computer generated effects to create a sequence with maximum impact. The team filmed the surfers in Hawaii while the horses were filmed running and jumping over gates. The team used CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) technology to duplicate the horses and add them to the sea backdrop that had been filmed in Hawaii, and they merged both real and computer generated images in order to create the flowing manes, confusion of hooves and spray from the surf.
CGI technology was also cleverly used to create the threatening wave that rises over the surfers and lastly to convert the whole sequence from its original colour to black and white.

Click here to view the advert