Splitting the G: Guinness Posters Before Social Media

One of the peculiar accomplishments of social media and celebrity culture is their ability to repopularize brands that, although doing quite well, were not necessarily hitting the younger demographic. Thus it is with Guinness, first brewed in Ireland in 1759, now brewed in 49 countries and available in more than 120. Although it was clearly popular with celebrities like Peter O’Toole in the past, sales of the brand were in the doldrums for almost 20 years until now—when the beer has enjoyed a resurgence fueled by Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube challenges. Current celebrities such as Hugh Jackman, Kevin Hart, Jason Momoa, and Kim Kardashian also appear to be fans of the famously dark, thick, creamy stout. Guinness is now the fastest growing imported beer in the United States, and during the recent holiday season, it even had to be rationed in London pubs due to excess demand. 

But Guinness has long had a powerful advertising presence with many award-winning television and poster campaigns. Let’s just look at a few of the posters:

This campaign was launched in 1929 and remained synonymous with the brand through the 1960s. For much of the 20th century, doctors actually recommended Guinness for its health-giving properties due to its relatively high iron content, especially to nursing mothers! 

John Gilroy started work on the Guinness account for S.H. Benson advertising company in 1930 and designed more than 50 posters for the brand over the next 30 years. This poster promotes the health benefits of a few pints.

Gilroy designed many posters featuring zoo animals, among them his famous seal posters. However the toucan is the most iconic of these designs, and became almost as much of a brand symbol as the harp, which first appeared on a Guinness label in 1862 and was trademarked in 1876. 

Dorothy L. Sayers, the renowned English crime writer, was also a copywriter for S.H. Benson; she came up with the rhyme for the campaign, “If he can say as you can/Guinness is good for you/How grand to be a Toucan/Just think what Toucan do.”

In the 1950s, when asked about his successful Guinness posters, Gilroy said “I love poster work and I am conscious of the poster artist’s great responsibilities. The hoardings are the museums of the masses. They hoard the art treasures of the man in the street. But the man in the street is in a hurry to catch a bus or avoid being caught by a bus: he has no time for contemplation. My posters are, therefore, a kind of aesthetic meal in a minute.”

Many other famous poster designers also worked for Guinness. This poster by British designer Tom Eckersley focuses on the relaxing aspects of a pint rather than on its health-giving properties.

Guinness is a long-term success story in Africa. A Guinness brewery opened in Nigeria in 1960, and today Nigeria and Cameroon are among the top five markets globally for the beer. The African version is a somewhat different product, however. Initially labeled “Guinness Foreign Extra Stout,” it has a higher alcohol content than the Irish original and is made with sorghum rather than barley. Nigerian folklore has it that a pint of Guinness has a similar effect to a certain little blue pill.

In 1969, two brewers working at the company’s St. James brewery in Dublin developed a system to produce draught-type Guinness from a can; it used a discharge of gas from an internal compartment that became known as the widget. 

This poster celebrates the luxury of sitting at home in slippers sipping happily at a Guinness. According to the company’s website in 2004, nine thousand people in a survey agreed that this widget was a greater invention than the internet.

In 1759, Arthur Guinness presciently signed a nine-thousand-year lease on the original brewery in Dublin; besides still operating in its original function, it has since become a major tourist attraction. It is fun to speculate about how the brand will be marketed in another 266 years. Oh, and the title of this blog post? In a new(ish) fad, you get a friend to film you on your first swallow of your pint of Guinness but you need to calibrate it so that the line between liquid and foam ends up halfway through the “G” of the brand name on the glass. Enjoy! (Responsibly, obviously).