55cm x 70cm
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
50cm x 65cm
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
30cm x 36cm
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
40cm x 23cm
There was a period of time during which my father — who doesn’t even truly like beer — would insist on ordering Guinness whenever we found ourselves in a restaurant that offered it. He would take a sip from his glass filled with ebony liquid topped by a frothy foam, and I’d watch as he inevitably recoiled at the bitter flavor. “I don’t know why I ordered this,” he’d usually utter, shaking his head. “I guess I just believed that Guinness was supposed to be better than most other beers. But it isn’t even really a beer, right? It’s like its own thing.”
I can understand why my father would believe that Guinness is good. After all, the “Guinness is Good” slogan was the figurative linchpin holding together the Guinness brand for decades. Along with the belief that Guinness is good — which my father and several others would vehemently disagree with — exists the belief that Guinness is good for you.
Guinness advertisement from the late 1920s
By fueling this belief, Guinness dangles the elusive hope that all barflies crave: That it’s possible to guzzle alcohol and reframe what everyone knows to be a commonly deleterious activity as surreptitiously healthy. So those are the real questions in need of answering: Can you sip a Guinness and skip the multivitamin? Can you literallydrink to your health?
WHY WOULD ANYONE BELIEVE THAT YOU COULD?
Because Guinness did everything in its power to ensure that people believed it to be true.
R
Even the Guinness ad campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s — again, built around the ubiquitous “Guinness is Good for You” slogan — were replete with fantastical references to the healthful benefits ostensibly lurking within Guinness. The standard style of the company’s advertising from this era tended to feature a general reference to the value of Guinness as a health tonic, one or more specific claims about the ways in which Guinness benefits its imbibers and then quotes allegedly extracted from the thousands of supposed letters that arrived in Guinness’ offices each month penned by “medical professionals.” Suspiciously, the medical professionals were never named; they were only referenced by their certifications as holders of the MD, LRCP, LRCPI, MRCS and MB designations, many of which are exclusive to the U.K., or are now outdated.
Some of the alleged claims about the medicinal value of Guinness are as follows:
“I have been accustomed to recommend Guinness medicinally, particularly for sleeplessness, finding it preferable to bromides and hypnotics in such cases, being in addition to its sedative action of great nutritional value.” — MRCS, LRCP“In many cases of anemia and debility after almost everything has failed, a single glass of Guinness after dinner has often been a turning point for the better.” — FRCS“I consider Guinness to be out and away the best tonic of them all.” — MB
Another Guinness advertisement included a statement that Guinness is “particularly suitable as a tonic restorative after influenza, bronchitis and other illnesses,” along with a supposed doctor’s recommendation that Guinness should be indulged in daily for its medicinal value.
WHAT IS THE TRUE NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF GUINNESS?
Well, we can start by dissecting a more contemporary analysis of Guinness. In a 2005 article from the Hartford Courant bearing the wishful-thinking title “Cheers! Certain Brands of Beer May Be Good for You,” Guinness was declared to be superior to other beers in a relative sense. It was lauded for having less alcohol, along with fewer calories and carbohydrates than Samuel Adams, Budweiser and Heineken, and Guinness proved to be twice as effective as Heineken at preventing blood clots in a University of Wisconsin study.
From there, some of the language requires parsing so as to minimize inappropriate attributions; Guinness is credited with possessing flavonoids, and these flavonoids had been demonstrated to be superior to vitamins C and E with respect to the abilities of those respective vitamins to prevent LDL cholesterol from clogging arteries.
First of all, it’s niacin — part of the vitamin B complex — that’s most heavily credited amongst the vitamins with LDL reduction. Second, the same flavonoid logic can be applied to dark chocolate, and often is. The logical takeaway in that scenario should be that dark chocolate is superior to other forms of chocolate in terms of its relative health value, which it arguably is, as opposed to taste, which it definitely isn’t.
In fact, it’s highly possible that the makers of Guinness had to sell consumers on its somewhat nebulous health benefits precisely because it wasn’t hitting any home runs in the taste department. For instance, another Guinness ad campaign from the same 1930s era provided readers with a lengthy explanation for how Guinness is intended to be consumed, instructing them how to draw Guinness into their mouths in a way that enables it to bypass the sweetness-detecting taste buds, and practically chastised customers for possessing immature palates if they felt displeasure derived from experiencing Guinness’ sour taste.
In terms of the raw numbers, when it comes to the antioxidant content in the form of the flavonoids in Guinness, they collectively possess 10 percent of the antioxidant value of a comparable amount of brewed coffee. In other words, Guinness may have some antioxidants present, but to describe it as “antioxidant rich” would be a massive stretch. Basically, if you’re looking for a substantive source of antioxidants, there are plenty of other foods and beverages you can consume.
As for vitamins and minerals, it’s critical that you consider the source that micronutrient information is being filtered through. The labeling of food items in the U.S. requires Reference Daily Intakes (RDI), while other organizations use guidelines like Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA). The recommendations generated by each are different, which means that selectively choosing one instead of the other and falling prey to confusion caused by the similarities between the two can have massive implications on how adequate you believe your food to be.
Here are the top six micronutrients contained in a pint of Guinness Stout — the most micronutrient-abundant beer within the Guinness family — along with its quantity, its RDA percentage and its RDI percentage:
Now that we’re all speaking the same language, we can get down to brass tacks. Aside from the quantity of copper present in the Guinness Stout, and the marginal amount of phosphorus contained therein, there’s nothing on this list that doesn’t get absolutely demolished by a can of Monster Energy. We can put Monster on trial for other reasons, but at least they deliver on their advertising promise of energy and never masqueraded as an all-purpose tonic for illness recovery.
Speaking of promises made in advertisements, there’s no evidence that ordinary vitamin content has a strong connection with either improving or inhibiting sleep. On the other hand, there’s an abundance of evidence — and probably plenty of personal anecdotes you can draw from — that underscores the ease with which alcohol can help to induce sleep. When you get right down to it, the “cure for insomnia” offered by Guinness was a nightly dose of drunkenness, which is also what would be required to drive most of the vitamin values of Guinness Stout into 100 percent territory.
SO GUINNESS ISN’T NUTRITIOUS?
Research indicates that Guinness is certainly more abounding in some vitamins and nutrients than several of its alcoholic brethren. Still, you’re likely to become sloppy drunk if your pursuit of micronutrient sufficiency requires you to piggyback on the overhyped shoulders of Guinness. My advice: If combining alcohol with vitamins is your thing, then pop a multivitamin and wash it down with something that actually tastes pleasant.
Ian Douglass is a volunteer firefighter, lackadaisical Concept2 rower and SkiErger and is the worst masters swimming All-American in recorded history. He also helps professional wrestlers publish their autobiographies, assists businesspeople with the writing of coherent thoughts and has overhyped degrees from Michigan and Northwestern.
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
Great picture of a recuperating Arkle getting his lunch washed down by one of his two daily bottles of Guinness by the managing director of Kempton Park Racecourse Henry Hyde.
Ratoath Co Meath. 45cm x 75cm
Arkle (19 April 1957 – 31 May 1970) was an IrishThoroughbred racehorse. A baygelding by Archive out of Bright Cherry, he was the grandson of the unbeaten (in 14 races) flat racehorse and prepotent sire Nearco. Arkle was born at Ballymacoll Stud, County Meath, by Mrs Mary Alison Baker of Malahow House, near Naul, County Dublin. He was named after the mountain Arkle in Sutherland, Scotland that bordered the Duchess of Westminster’s Sutherland estate. Owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, he was trained by Tom Dreaper at Greenogue, Kilsallaghan in County Meath, Ireland, and ridden during his steeplechasing career by Pat Taaffe.
At 212, his Timeform rating is the highest ever awarded to a steeplechaser. Only Flyingbolt, also trained by Dreaper, had a rating anywhere near his at 210. Next on their ratings are Sprinter Sacre on 192 and then Kauto Star and Mill House on 191. Despite his career being cut short by injury, Arkle won three Cheltenham Gold Cups, the Blue Riband of steeplechasing, and a host of other top prizes.
On 19th April, 2014 a magnificent 1.1 scale bronze statue was unveiled in Ashbourne, County Meath in commemoration of Arkle.In the 1964 Cheltenham Gold Cup, Arkle beat Mill House (who had won the race the previous year) by five lengths to claim his first Gold Cup at odds of 7/4. It was the last time he did not start as the favourite for a race. Only two other horses entered the Gold Cup that year.
The racing authorities in Ireland took the unprecedented step in the Irish Grand National of devising two weight systems — one to be used when Arkle was running and one when he was not. Arkle won the 1964 race by only one length, but he carried two and half stones more than his rivals.
The following year's Gold Cup saw Arkle beat Mill House by twenty lengths at odds of 3/10. In the 1966 renewal, he was the shortest-priced favourite in history to win the Gold Cup, starting at odds of 1/10. He won the race by thirty lengths despite a mistake early in the race where he ploughed through a fence. However, it did not stop his momentum, nor did he ever look like falling. Arkle had a strange quirk in that he crossed his forelegs when jumping a fence. He went through the season 1965/66 unbeaten in five races.
Arkle won 27 of his 35 starts and won at distances from 1m 6f up to 3m 5f. Legendary Racing commentator Peter O'Sullevan has called Arkle a freak of nature — something unlikely to be seen again.
Besides winning three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups (1964, 1965, 1966) and the 1965 King George VI Chase, Arkle triumphed in a number of other important handicap chases, including the 1964 Irish Grand National (under 12-0), the 1964 and 1965 Hennessy Gold Cups (both times under 12-7), the 1965 Gallagher Gold Cup (conceding 16 lb to Mill House while breaking the course record by 17 seconds), and the 1965 Whitbread Gold Cup(under 12-7). In the 1966 Hennessy, he failed by only half a length to give Stalbridge Colonist 35 lb. The scale of the task Arkle faced is shown by the winner coming second and third in the two following Cheltenham Gold Cups, while in third place was the future 1969 Gold Cup winner, What A Myth.
In December 1966, Arkle raced in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park but struck the guard rail with a hoof when jumping the open ditch, which resulted in a fractured pedal bone; despite this injury, he completed the race and finished second. He was in plaster for four months and, though he made a good enough recovery to go back into training, he never ran again. He was retired and ridden as a hack by his owner and then succumbed to what has been variously described as advanced arthritis or possibly brucellosis and was put down at the early age of 13.
Arkle became a national legend in Ireland. His strength was jokingly claimed to come from drinking 2 pints of Guinness a day. At one point, the slogan Arkle for President was written on a wall in Dublin. The horse was often referred to simply as "Himself", and he supposedly received items of fan mail addressed to 'Himself, Ireland'.
The Irish government-owned Irish National Stud, at Tully, Kildare, Co. Kildare, Ireland, has the skeleton of Arkle on display in its museum. A statue in his memory was erected in Ashbourne Co Meath in 2004.
Dimensions : 55cm x 60cm
38cm x 40cm
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
Old Bushmills Irish Whiskey advert- depicting the Cheshire Hunt .Officially the worlds oldest whiskey distillery- when in 1608 King James I granted Sir Thomas Phillips,landowner and Governor of Co Antrim,Ireland - a licence to distill.It was in 1784 when Mr Hugh Anderson registered the Old Bushmills Distillery and the Pot Still became its registered trademark, which is still a mark of genuine distinction to this day.
50cm x 65cm Belfast
The Bushmills area has a long tradition with distillation. According to one story, as far back as 1276, an early settler called Sir Robert Savage of Ards, before defeating the Irish in battle, fortified his troops with "a mighty drop of acqua vitae". In 1608, a licence was granted to Sir Thomas Phillips (Irish adventurer) by King James I to distil whiskey.
The Bushmills Old Distillery Company itself was not established until 1784 by Hugh Anderson. Bushmills suffered many lean years with numerous periods of closure with no record of the distillery being in operation in the official records both in 1802 and in 1822. In 1860 a Belfast spirit merchant named Jame McColgan and Patrick Corrigan bought the distillery; in 1880 they formed a limited company. In 1885, the original Bushmills buildings were destroyed by fire but the distillery was swiftly rebuilt. In 1890, a steamship owned and operated by the distillery, SS Bushmills, made its maiden voyage across the Atlantic to deliver Bushmills whiskey to America. It called at Philadelphiaand New York City before heading on to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama.
In the early 20th century, the U.S. was a very important market for Bushmills (and other Irish Whiskey producers). American Prohibition in 1920 came as a large blow to the Irish Whiskey industry, but Bushmills managed to survive. Wilson Boyd, Bushmills' director at the time, predicted the end of prohibition and had large stores of whiskey ready to export. After the Second World War, the distillery was bought by Isaac Wolfson, and, in 1972, it was taken over by Irish Distillers, meaning that Irish Distillers controlled the production of all Irish whiskey at the time. In June 1988, Irish Distillers was bought by French liquor group Pernod Ricard.In June 2005, the distillery was bought by Diageo for £200 million. Diageo have also announced a large advertising campaign in order to regain a market share for Bushmills.In May 2008, the Bank of Ireland issued a new series of sterling banknotes in Northern Ireland which all feature an illustration of the Old Bushmills Distillery on the obverse side, replacing the previous notes series which depicted Queen's University of Belfast.
In November 2014 it was announced that Diageo had traded the Bushmills brand with Jose Cuervo in exchange for the 50% of the Don Julio brand of tequila that Diageo did not already own.
Bushmills whiskey range on display at the distillery
Bushmills Original – Irish whiskey blend sometimes called White Bush or Bushmills White Label. The grain whiskey is matured in American oak casks.
Black Bush – A blend with a significantly greater proportion of malt whiskey than the white label. It features malt whiskey aged in casks previously used for Spanish Oloroso sherry.
Red Bush – Like the Black Bush, this is a blend with a higher proportion of malt whiskey than the standard bottling, but in contrast the malt whiskey has been matured in ex-bourbon casks.
Bushmills 10 year single malt – Combines malt whiskeys aged at least 10 years in American bourbon or Oloroso sherry casks.
Bushmills Distillery Reserve 12 year single malt – exclusively available at the Old Bushmills Distillery, this 12 year aged single malt is matured in oak casks for a rich, complex flavour with notes of sherry, dark chocolate and spices.
Bushmills 16 year single malt – Malt whiskeys aged at least 16 years in American bourbon barrels or Spanish Oloroso sherry butts are mixed together before finishing in Port pipes for a few months.
Bushmills 21 year single malt – A limited number of 21 year bottles are made each year. After 19 years, bourbon-barrel-aged and sherry-cask-aged malt whiskeys are combined, which is followed by two years of finishing in Madeira drums.
Bushmills 1608: Originally released as a special 400th Anniversary whiskey; since 2009 it will be available only in the Whiskey Shop at the distillery and at duty-free shops.
This Flying Column operated across the West Mayo area during the War of Independence. The photograph was taken shortly after the Carrowkennedy ambush on a RIC Barracks; the men are displaying the captured weapons.
On the 2nd June 1921 the West Mayo Flying Column ambushed British soldiers on the Westport to Leenane road. After the ambush they went on the run. While near Laherdane in the vicinity of Neiphin Mountain they were visited by Jack Leonard. Leonard was a photographer and a cousin of Michael Kilroy, who was the Officer in Command of the brigade and took the only photograph of the Flying Column that exists.
32cm x 28cm
Originating from an pub in Co Kerry -this innuendo laden election poster will catch the eye in any bar !
Richard Nixon’s mother Hannah was descended from the Milhous family, Irish Quakers from Timahoe, Kildare while the first Nixon to arrive in the US, James, left Ireland in 1731. President Nixon visited the small town in October 1970 during a state visit to Ireland. He is the only US president to date to resign from office following his involvement in the Watergate scandal.
50cm x 65cm
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
74cm x 38cm
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
45cm x 60cm
Anticipation is an Irish advertisement launched by Guinness plc in 1994 to promote Guinness-brand draughtstout. The advert, which appeared in print, posters, and cinema and television spots, was conceived by Irish advertising agency Arks, and starred relatively unknown Irish actor Joe McKinney as the 'Dancing Man' and Gordon Winter as the barman. It was the final part of the "Guinness Time" advertising campaign, which had been running in Ireland since the late 1980s.
The advert was credited with increasing Guinness' sales, market share and brand awareness figures. However, controversy arose following claims of plagiarism raised by British director Mehdi Norowzian, who launched an unsuccessful lawsuit in 1998 seeking remuneration for the use of techniques and style from his 1992 short film Joy.
Sequence
The low-budget ad featured only two characters: a patron of a pub and the barman serving him. The patron (McKinney) orders a pint of Guinness stout and, while waiting for the pint to be poured, carries out a series of quirky dancing movements with the settling pint in the foreground, to the amusement of the barman (Winter). The piece ends with the patron taking his first sip of the freshly poured pint overlaid by the Guinness advertising slogan "No time like Guinness Time". The advert is set to Guaglione by Pérez Prado, and makes heavy use of jump cutting from a static camera to allow the dancer to make a series of movements that could not be achieved in reality.
Reception
The distinctive jump cut editing techniques of Anticipation won the commercial critical acclaim and several awards from within the advertising industry, including the 1995 Institute of Creative Advertising & Design craft award for editing as well as a Gold Medal for editing and a Golden Shark award at the Kinsale International Advertising Festival.
The success of the campaign led Guinness to re-broadcast it in the United Kingdom in 1995, as a transition between the campaign "The Man With the Guinness"/"Pure Genius", which had just concluded with Chain, and its new "Black and White" campaign, still in development.Though Chain was to be the last in the Pure Genius campaign, Anticipationwas tagged with the Pure Genius slogan in the UK instead of There's No Time Like Guinness Time.
As a result of its featuring in the spot, Pérez Prado's Guaglione reached the Number 1 spot in the Irish music charts,and Number 2 in the British Top 40.
Lawsuit
In 1992, British director Mehdi Norowzian submitted a show reel containing a number of short examples of his work to several prospective employers, including the Irish advertising agency Arks Ltd., in the hopes of being taken on to direct one or more of their commercials. Included on the reel was a short piece entitled Joy, which was shot using a static camera on a London rooftop and comprised a jump cut sequence of a man performing an extended dance of exuberance against a plain canvas background.
Arks Ltd. were contracted by Guinness to produce an advertisement to run in Ireland. Among the ideas proposed was one based on a scene from the cinematic version of Roddy Doyle's novel, The Snapper, where a man rushes into a pub to celebrate the birth of his grandson with a pint of Guinness. The artistic director at Arks, thinking of possible ways to build on the concept, recalled Norowzian's submitted reel and came up with a script and storyboard based on Joy to present to Guinness. The idea was accepted, and Arks approached Norowzian to direct the commercial. Norowzian refused, as he was unwilling to simply "commercialise" an old idea, and wanted to create something new. The agency then took on Richie Smyth as director, urging him to create something "with an atmosphere broadly similar to that portrayed in Joy". Feeling that the original storyboard was too close to Joy, a new one was prepared. The result was Anticipation.
Following the broadcast of the television spot in 1994, Norowzian lodged a complaint and ultimately a lawsuit against Arks Ltd. and Guinness, claiming that Anticipation breached his copyrights and accusing the agency of passing off. The plaintiff's claim for copyright infringement were based on a passage in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988defining a dramatic work as including "recordings of a work of dance or mime", and that Anticipation was, or included, a copy of a substantial part of Joy. The case reached the High Court in 1997, where the claim of passing off was dropped. On 17 July 1998, Justice Rattee rendered his judgment that the jump cutting techniques used in Joy produced something qualitatively different from a recording of a dance or mime routine and that, as such, Joy was not in itself a dramatic work. It was therefore defined as an entrepreneurial work, a status which confers protection over only the physical recording of a work rather than the work itself. He also ruled that Anticipation did not reproduce either the whole or part of Joy.
The decision was appealed, but while the Court of Appeal unanimously held that the content of a film (including the use of film and editing techniques) could enjoy copyright protection as a dramatic work, the presiding Justices ruled that Anticipation did not significantly copy any portion of Joy and dismissed the case. Ultimately, Norowzian was ordered to pay £200,000 in legal costs.As a result of the case, the Institute of Contemporary Arts called for reform of copyright law in the United Kingdom.
Legacy
Actor Joe McKinney spent 1994–6 making personal appearances around Europe publicising Guinness. The lifestyle became too hectic and he gave up alcohol in 1997.He found it difficult to secure other roles due to typecasting as "the Guinness man", spending time in the US where the ad had not been broadcast.
A comparison of two frames from Anticipation with their respective versions in Eskimo.
As one of the most recognisable Guinness advertisements of the 1990s, Anticipation has been mimicked or parodied in a number of more recent Guinness campaigns, including the Irish Waiting spot in 2004 promoting cans of Guinness draught beer,and director JJ Keith's British Eskimo commercial, which was part of an extended campaign promoting Guinness Extra Cold in summer 2004 and 2005.
In March 2009, Guinness announced that Anticipation would be aired again as part of a "Classic Ads" campaign to mark the brewery's 250th anniversary.
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !