This case study outlines the strategy behind the development of an app created by Geronimo for Guinness, to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
Executive summaryGuinness is a drink that is intrinsically linked to the spirit of being Irish and the celebration of St Patrick’s Day. Guinness wanted to promote St Patrick’s Day as the ‘Friendliest Day of the Year’ and create something that could be shared amongst friends in the digital space before pints were shared on St. Patrick’s Day itself.
We created an innovative Facebook app which allowed you to share a ‘virtual’ pint of Guinness with your friends and personalise it by putting their name on the glass. The campaign became so successful that it spread beyond Europe (where it was launched) into the US, Brazil and even Israel.
Background to project/campaignSt Patrick’s Day is a day when the spirit of the Irish is celebrated across the world. It’s a day when people catch up with friends and family and a day that is always made better by enjoying a pint of Guinness! With this in mind, Guinness wanted to create a buzz in the lead up to St Patrick’s Day and to encourage people to think about Guinness as the embodiment of this Irish spirit by sharing a pint with their friends on the day.
Client ObjectivesThough St Patrick’s Day is better known in the UK than in the rest of Europe, Guinness wanted to create a similar buzz in other European countries including Spain, France, Italy and Germany. We wanted to ensure that the message of ‘sharing’ came across very clearly in order to make it relevant for those who may not have been familiar with the spirit of St Patrick’s Day.
So what did we do?With this ‘sharing’ ethos in mind, our aim was to create something that could be personalised and passed on from one friend to another. The intention was to drive online engagement across Europe and capture the spirit of Guinness in a digital space.
Our online engagement campaign was activated through Guinness customer database across EMEA – and it got people pouring and sharing their own virtual pint in preparation for St Patrick’s Day. Innovation in the form of Facebook’s first every augmented reality campaign meant that our existing community of customers and advocates could shout each other a pint, with a personalised message. It proved to be hugely engaging, with those of trying the app choosing to share it with friends, and each of those shared pints creating 25 pieces of social feedback. People who viewed the pints that were subsequently shared were compelled to comment over 180,000 times. Despite this being an EMEA campaign, once on Facebook it couldn’t be contained, and spread across 20+ countries, as far as Brazil, Canada and Israel.
It was also the first augmented reality campaign ever run by Facebook as well as the first personalised augmented reality application to be developed. So a lot of firsts!
Client Testimonial“We’re really excited to offer this app to our consumers in the lead up to St. Patrick’s Day to help spread their Irish Spirit and make this St. Patrick’s Day The Friendliest Day of the Year. Guinness is an iconic brand synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day, so we wanted to drive fun brand interaction in a way that hasn’t been done before.”
This case study has been nominated in the categories of Best App and Best Innovation in the Social Buzz Awards
