New Guinness Africa ad launches 'Made of Black' tag
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AMV BBDO has created a new Guinness ad for the Pan African market. Aimed squarely at a youth audience, it features a new tagline, ‘Made of Black’…
The ad runs at over two minutes long and features a range of African performers and artists. It is set to a soundtrack of Kanye West’s Black Skinhead. The spot launched last night on MTV Base, as part of a four-hour takeover by Guinness on the channel, which featured guest appearances by musicians including Fuse ODG and Phyno. Shown below is the ad, alongside two posters from the campaign:
According to the press release, the ‘Made of Black’ tagline aims to assert Guinness’ uniqueness as a black beer. It is also clearly trying to tie the beer into certain aspects of black culture – particularly music and dance. “The idea behind the #madeofblack campaign is to celebrate the confidence and attitude that Guinness shares with the people who drink it, an attitude that we’ve called ‘Black’,” says the release. “#madeofblack is not about colour. Its focus is on celebrating those that exhibit this Black attitude.”
This can feel a little confusing to European fans of Guinness, who associate the stout firmly with Ireland. Yet in Africa this link is not particularly strong, as this article on the Smithsonian.com explains. This gives the brand more flexiblity to establish itself in the African market on different terms, however some of the lines featured here – ‘Black dances to a different beat’, for example, or ‘Black writes its own rules’ – feel clichéd and lazy, rather than dynamic and new. As a piece of film though, it is slick and stylish, and certainly fresh for Guinness: it will be interesting to see how it plays out with the youth market it is pitched at.
Credits:
Agency: AMV BBDO
Creative director: Mike Schalit
Creatives: Mike Sutherland, Antony Nelson
Production company: Rogue Films
Director: Sam Brown
Post: The Mill
