Hasta La Ideas

In today’s print edition of The Guardian, the regular ‘Eyewitness’ centre spread is given over to nine images from Guinness’ latest advertising campaign, Made of More…

Designed in the Eyewitness format, the ‘advertisement feature’ includes a mixture of stills from the brand’s recent TV campaign featuring the well-dressed ‘Sapeurs’ of Congo-Brazzaville’s Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes, and portraits of the group’s members by Héctor Mediavilla. (CR’s Eliza wrote about the TV ad from AMV BBDO here.)

On The Guardian’s website, however, today’s Eyewitness image is listed as a photograph by Ian Langsdon of the culmination of Karl Largerfeld’s Chanel show at Paris fashion week (images from which feature on the front page and further inside).

So it’s unclear whether the Guinness feature – which runs over pages 22-23 with the brand’s logo shown top-right – only appears in the London edition, or is used more widely.

The link-up is the latest initiative from Guardian Labs, through which it produces “sponsored content” (it has editorial guidelines relating to this online) and has resulted in the collaboration at theguardian.com/guinness-made-of-more.

From there visitors can watch Mediavilla’s short film about the Sapeurs, access the Eyewitness spread and also read an accompanying feature on the group, A stylish philosophy. Writing in The Guardian earlier this month, Mark Sweeney also covered the campaign in the paper’s Media pages.

While photographs of the subjects of Guinness’ new campaign undeniably make for interesting images, the Eyewitness spread is usually the preserve of the best news photography captured on a particular day.

Whether other brands can slot so neatly into this section in partnership with the newspaper – without alienating fans of photojournalism and reportage – remains to be seen.

Editor: Anna Goldie. Produced for Guardian Labs by Guardian Creative to a brief agreed with Guinness. Paid for by Guinness. All editorial controlled by the Guardian, except those articles labelled as advertisement feature.