Ireland – Guinness launched a St Patrick’s Day campaign that surprisingly asked customers to go easy on the booze. Instead, the Diageo-owned brand encourages people to try its non-alcoholic beer: Guinness 0.0.
The sober dark beer is set to be available in cans and micro-draught across the country, with four iconic pub façades in Dublin, Galway, Cork and Belfast rebranding as Guinness 0.0 pubs; O’Donoghue’s in Dublin will become 0.0’Donoghue’s, for example. At the Guinness Six Nations rugby finale, customers will get a free pint of Guinness 0.0 using an app, and 164 Tesco shops will give loyalty card-holders a free four-pack of Guinness 0.0 for every regular Guinness four-pack bought.
The accompanying video campaign taps into a recent TikTok trend featuring screaming foam faces on top of everything from a beer to a latte. Guinness adapted the gimmick to its stout glasses with the faces singing along to Bonnie Tyler’s 1984 hit Holding Out for a Hero. As discussed in our Sober Bars report, the brand’s campaign finds inspiration in a growing non-alcoholic movement – especially among the younger generation.
Strategic opportunity
Moving into the non-alcoholic market is an important strategy for alcohol brands as it will attract a growing segment of young consumers who are less enamoured with traditional drinking
