Word on the Street: The Guinness Experience
What makes the Guinness experience?
I love having a Guinness every now and then. When I do have a Guinness, I always admire how complete the experience is. With sales of about £2b, according to their 10k, they must be doing something right.
So as a successful product, it’s worth wondering what makes the Guinness experience? I’ve broken it out into several components and offered some of my thoughts on how to replicate some of this success at the end. The main experiential components are:
Brand Identity
The Pour
The Visual Appearance
The Flavor
The Drinking Process
The Brand Identity
A few examples of Guinness ads. You can see more here
Guinness is synonymous with Ireland, Irish culture, St. Pattric’s day, Irish pubs, etc. When you have a Guinness, you’re feeling connected to all these things, just as when you have a Corona, you imagine yourself on a beach or associate it with a sunny vacation in Mexico.
This strong association is built by pubs hanging neon signs displaying proudly that they they serve Guinness inside, the harp in the logo, with sponsorship deals and ads, as well as their famous brewery tour in Dublin.
Most importantly, Guinness ‘owns’ the category. They are the measuring stick against which other Irish dry stouts are compared, and one can even argue they ‘own’ the Nitro beer category, with other nitro beers being described as “like Guinness.” By being the standard, Guinness can remain top-of-mind, because even when you’re having a competitor, you’re thinking of Guinness.
Furthermore, requiring a dedicated nitrogen line makes it harder for them to win a new handle (a bar may have to install a separate system), but it also makes their accounts more sticky, since the competitors in this category are more limited.
The Pour
A pillowey head of foam that you can even draw a shamrock in
Whether you’re at a bar with Guinness on draft, at home with a Draught can, or anywhere else, the pour of a Guinness is an experience. With a ‘widget’ or ‘rocket’ in their cans and bottles respectively, or with their “two-part pour” when you’re in a pub, having a Guinness is different than an ordinary beer. This focus on the ‘proper’ pour may produce a better pint as a result, but it also functions as theater that sticks in a consumer’s mind long after the beer is gone.
What I personally love is the ‘woosh’ of the widget in the can and the way the beer appears to ‘build’ from the bottom up. This is a result of the contrasting dark beer settling through the cream head that makes it appear to ‘fill’ a glass from the bottom upwards.
The pour delays the delivery of the beer, but rather than being a negative, it adds to the experience. The visual theater and a proper pouring procedure also lend itself to social media and offline interactions, whether you’re proud of your un-mixed black and tan, your traditional Guinness, or the way the “surge” settles. The end result are organically generated advertisements on each of our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other feeds.
“In the pub or bar the perfect pint of Guinness Draught is served using our famous ‘two-part’ pour. First, start with a clean, dry glass. Pour the Guinness Draught into a glass tilted at 45 degrees, until it is three-quarters full. Allow the surge to settle before filling the glass completely to the top. Your perfect pint, complete with its creamy white head, is then ready to drink.”
The Visual Appearance
The official Guinness pint glass
Source: Guinness website
There’s overlap between the pour and appearance, especially in the early moments of the beer in your glass. Once the beer has settled, you end up with a dark beer that is “not actually black but rather dark ruby red” (according to the Guinness website) and a starkly contrasting cream colored head of foam on top.
The glassware is designed with the beer in mind and features a white label that contrasts the beer as well as helps one notice the off-white colored head. The golden harp pops as the only colored feature on or in the glass. The official glassware is a proprietary shape that accentuates the pouring theater, but also is visually striking due to the contours and sharp edges. Even in a static image, the glass seems dynamic, asymmetrical, and memorable. So along with consuming the liquid, someone who’s having a Guinness is also looking at something interesting too, and unlike the liquid inside, this glass can be ‘sold’ to someone many times, providing value each time someone uses it.
The Flavor
Guinness gets its roasty character from dark malts
Guinness is often referred to as “heavy,” but it is actually one of the lighter beers on the market, clocking in at 4.2% ABV. Furthermore, there’s only 125 calories per 12 oz, compared to 236 for the same amount of Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA. What it does have is a roasty character and very little hoppiness to cover up the malt.
On a nitro pour (mine came from the can with the widget), the beer has a creamy mouthfeel and slight sweetness from the nitrogen and a touch of maltiness on the back end. The middle of the beer feels a bit thin, but the beer lingers with roastyness that invites you to take another sip. While Guinness no longer stands out based on its flavor profile, for a while, it was the only dark option in wide distribution amongst a field of macro lager.
The drinking process
Lacing rings typical of a Guinness
How many beers do you know that keep a score card while you drink them? When you’re having a Guinness, the lacing results in these ‘rings’ that tell you where you’ve paused. Some folks even end up with a foam mustache if they go for their Guinness a bit aggressively. This provides another visual component, even after the beer is gone, further extending the experience.
So what can we learn?
Guinness doesn’t do any one thing that’s entirely unique, but it does a lot of rare things in combination. For example, its branded glass reminds me of Belgium where many beers have their own unique glassware. The nitro pour, once a rare feature, is now found at small, local breweries. The Irish identity is also claimed by Smithwick's and Strongbow. But Guinness is able to combine a lot of these components in a way that no other brand or product can claim. From the theater of the pour through the last sip and the rings left behind, Guinness provides a complete experience. The strong ownership of the Irish identity and beautiful glass evokes memories and feelings beyond the scope of a malted barley beverage, wile the widget driven hiss of cracking open a Daught can is a little shot of dopamine every time. By combining these features the way they do, they’ve created differentiation that is hard to imitate.
So to beers and breweries that aren’t Guinness, the key takeaway is to understand the complete experience that Guinness provides. Understand that little details like which color you choose to print your branded glasses are important. The contrast of the printed logo and the beer color helps your brewery stand out while a consumer is drinking your beer or photographing it. Also worth noting is that Guinness successfully shaped the market to demand the perfect pour, even though it’s not the most time efficient. They were able to find entertainment value in time that is an annoyance for other beers. In LA, many local spots have recreated this theater by introducing a cask pour option to some of their beers. For customers who enjoy this style of beer, they can watch the bartender pull the tap and pour them their perfect beer, adding to the anticipation and eventual enjoyment once it’s served.
Think about what your points of differentiation are and how you can round out your beer experience to make it more complete.