Guinness beer turns to mobile for branding campaign

By Giselle Abramovich

September 24, 2008

O Danny boy, the pub, the pub is calling...

Guinness, an Irish brewer, ran a mobile campaign via the Vodafone Live platform to raise brand awareness.

The St. Patrick’s Day-themed campaign ran in March. Yahoo conducted a study to measure the brand impact of a mobile campaign on the Vodafone Live platform.

“The strategy for Guinness was to engage with targeted users and drive purchases, brand awareness and brand favorability,” said David Katz, vice president of mobile advertising and publisher services at Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. “This was a classic branding campaign around St. Patrick’s Day.”

Marvellous, London, handles the account.

Using the Guinness St. Patrick’s Day campaign, Yahoo surveyed those exposed to the campaign and a matched control sample, to understand differences in brand awareness, mobile ad awareness, brand favorability and purchase intent.

Irish eyes are smiling on mobile

Guinness banners on the Vodafone Live platform asked British consumers to click to find a pub via the free pub finder.

Those who clicked were routed to a page that asks for age verification.

Users were then able to get information on Guinness and find a pub near them that serves the beer.

Men ages 25-44, were extremely positive as a result of exposure to the campaign on Vodafone Live.

Exposure led to 2.5 million impressions and a 25 percent lift in mobile ad awareness.

The banners also resulted in 12 percent lift in brand favorability and 9 percent increase in purchase intent.

Benchmarked against online norms, these results emerge as above average or excellent campaign impact.

Additionally, irregular drinkers of Guinness reacted well with a significant impact on purchase intent.

Guinness is not the first big brand to achieve its goals in a mobile campaign with the help of Yahoo.
Another example of a leading brand using mobile as a medium to reach consumers is Jaguar.

Jaguar came to Yahoo in November for help in driving awareness of the new 2009 Jaguar XF car. This was Jaguar's first mobile campaign nationwide.

In conjunction with the 2009 Jaguar XF’s reveal at the LA Auto Show, Jaguar wanted to drive qualified traffic to the XF mobile Web site to engage consumers in the XF experience and capture handraisers.

Yahoo’s reach was able to generate instant awareness. Yahoo’s targeting products allowed Jaguar to pinpoint in-market shoppers for luxury vehicles. Finally, Yahoo’s audience on the Jaguar mobile site was said to be highly engaged and took more than 56,000 actions.

Among those actions these visitors took on the Jaguar mobile site were looking at photos, videos and contacting dealers. This generated 2,400 qualified leads.

Continuing the November effort, Jaguar North America teamed up with Yahoo as a key advertiser throughout the duration of the 2008 NCAA Men's Final Four Tournament.

“Yahoo has played a big role in establishing the role of advertising from the PC,” Mr. Katz said. “Now we are trying to do the same on the mobile phone though our methodical studies.”