Diageo and the Irish Film Institute (IFI) have put a call out to Irish creatives, filmmakers and content creators to “reinterpret and reimagine” a campaign for Guinness 0.0 inspired by some of the brand’s most iconic ads from the 1950s to the 1990s in an archive curated by the IFI. Guinness ‘Island’ (above), created by Arks Advertising and a creative team led by Frank Sheerin in 1977, was voted by Marketing readers as Ireland’s ‘Ad of the Century’.
The launch of the award, the Guinness Archives Award, coincides with the most extensive digitisation project of audio-visual collections for the iconic brand. The entire catalogue of 548 ads, which spans a period of four decades from 1955 to 1995, has been catalogued, digitally preserved and made available to the public for the first time, qualifying it the largest publicly available collection of brand advertising in these islands.
An award will be granted to individuals or creative groups for projects which best align Guinness 0.0 with the reinterpretation of ‘an expression of Irishness’ through the use of video, social media, out of home (OOH) and display. The winner will be chosen by a panel of judges from Diageo and the IFI, based on such criteria as the original interpretation of the brief, creative delivery, and Diageo advertising code guidelines.
Inspired by the success of the IFI’s Irish Adverts Project in 2016, the initiative is aided by a grant from Coimisiún na Meán. Created to promote the Guinness brand on TV in Ireland and the UK, the ads feature an array of talent, with directors such as Alan Parker, Tony and Ridley Scott; singer Elkie Brooks and Clannad and the Chieftains. British actors included Bill Nighy, Peter Postlethwaite, Jon Pertwee (Dr Who) and Robert Lindsay.
Irish actor Stanley Townsend fronted the highly-acclaimed but briefly run Guinness ‘I Believe’ cinema ad. In 1994, Joe McKinney famously danced around a pint in ‘Anticipation’. A short film on the digitised ads is showing on the third floor of the Guinness Storehouse at St James’s Gate. Applications for the Guinness Archives Award are open until 5pm on Friday, April 5 2024. For details on entering the competition, click here
