Background: Guinness has held a long association with Irish rugby for over thirty years. However, Guinness was not an official sponsor for the Rugby World Cup. Our task was to support two Rugby films on social media and seek opportunities to grab share of voice from rival brands such as Heineken.
My role: The social strategy focused on pre-planning ready-made creative concepts that enabled Guinness to capitalise on, and 'own' the excitement surrounding 'moments of more' across a selection of matches. To do this, our team was on standby, watching the games and chatting live via Whatsapp to ensure we were ready to create, publish and promote the reactive social content as soon as possible within a 5-hour window.
The first opportunity followed minnows Japan's incredible comeback to beat rugby giants South Africa. For this we shared an image of the Japanese team huddled into the shape of a head of Guinness.
The first opportunity followed minnows Japan's incredible comeback to beat rugby giants South Africa. For this we shared an image of the Japanese team huddled into the shape of a head of Guinness.
The team also released content after Romania's comeback against Canada, Ireland's attritional win over France and for New Zealand winning the tournament.
Results: Despite not being an official World Cup sponsor, Guinness was seen to have won the battle for fans hearts throughout the tournament.
The 'Japan' image generated 63.5k likes, 8k shares and reached over 4m people, as well as being picked up by wider media, such as Marketing Magazine.
The Irish and Romania reactive posts also generated 30k - 45k interactions respectively.
"Adidas, Lucozade and Guinness trump official sponsors in Rugby World Cup race." Campaign Magazine, 2015
"Heineken has claimed that the millions of pounds it pumped into sponsoring the Rugby World Cup has been worth it despite a new social media report revealing the brand was outperformed by rival Guinness." The Drum, 2015
Awards (Social Media Categories):
Beer Marketing Awards - Best Online Marketing
Beer Marketing Awards - Grand Prix
