How weather-triggered DOOH ads made Aussies reach for a wintertime Guinness

Despite most Australians raising a pint of the dark stuff on St. Patrick’s Day, for the remaining 364 days of the year, the dark ale barely comes to mind for consumers. While physical availability is decent, mental availability is not. Drinkers don’t know when or why they would choose to drink Guinness.

The need for an awareness campaign was obvious, establishing clear objectives for Guinness to grow brand association with a new drinking occasion and increase sales of its beer.

This led to the creation of ’The Guinness Brewery of Meteorology’ campaign, designed to highlight the connection between the ideal temperature for enjoying a Guinness and Australia’s winter weather.

The challenge was to identify a new occasion for Aussies to reach for a pint, and the answer was clear: make winter ’Guinness season.’

Strategy

Master brewers in Ireland suggest the ideal temperature of Guinness barrels for the perfect pour is between 5º and 7º C, which is around the same as average winter temperatures in Australia.

An opportunity presented itself: winter needed to be positioned as ‘Guinness season’ – illustrating to Aussies that, when the temperature drops, it’s a lovely time for a Guinness.

To ensure this was a success, Guinness utilized the campaign and technological smarts of media agency UM, performance agency Kinesso and programmatic out-of-home (OOH) technology leader Vistar Media.

As winter weather can be unpredictable, Guinness needed to use a channel that could be reactive at the pace of Aussie weather conditions, so they leaned into the innovative capabilities of programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH).

This campaign came together as a weather-triggered DOOH campaign. When the temperature fell below 7° C, the creative would appear across relevant DOOH screens in Australia.

UM and Vistar Media were able to identify and programmatically activate small format outdoor screens within 1km of pubs serving Guinness. To further drive consumption, Guinness offered Australians a free pint whenever the temperature dropped below that magic temperature of 7ºC.

By harnessing the power of programmatic OOH, Guinness took over the streets of four of key markets – Greater Metro Areas of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth – through the 2023 Winter months, from June 9 to August 27.

With over 21 creative variations across the 4 cities, the messaging was tailored to maximize the campaign’s relevance to Guinness drinkers. The agility and responsiveness of programmatic DOOH allowed a swift response to different weather patterns, ensuring that Guinness was there, at the right moment, in the right locations, using weather triggers to go live.

The campaign incorporated QR codes to create a redeemable feature, allowing users to register for a free pint of Guinness by simply scanning the code on the ads. A dynamic creative strategy supported this, favoring video over static images and frequently rotating creative assets to keep the campaign fresh and engaging.

Results

Just as important as the creative and targeting strategy was creating a measurement methodology that would understand programmatic DOOH exposure to conversion.

By working collaboratively across agencies, it was possible to accurately generate and measure the results of the campaign using visit uplift, also known as footfall attribution. This was a three-stage process, which included tracking, conversion and reporting.

Through the campaign, weekly DOOH impression logs were shared with Lifesight to create exposed device mapping. Anonymized exposed device data was stored and tracked throughout the campaign and attribution window period. Following this process, conversion was understood, as target destinations were monitored for visits from devices exposed to the DOOH campaign.

This reporting showed the campaign delivered over 11.8m impressions across 2,748 placements in the four key markets. The results of this campaign were nothing short of remarkable and delivered against the campaign objectives.

The campaign reached 2.1m unique users and saw nearly 5.4m impressions across the metro capital cities, driving an incredible 1.2m pub visitations. This created a visit uplift of 14.7%. This uplift was determined by comparing the normalized visit rate of the exposed group with the normalized visit rate of a non-exposed control group.

Guinness was able to successfully reach its target audience of males 18 and older, as 69.52% exposed visitors were male and 30.48% were female. Examining their ages, 46.5% of exposed visitors were aged 18-24, and 17.01% were 35-44.

Guinness had 2,000 beer vouchers to be redeemed – and all of these vouchers were successfully claimed throughout the campaign period.

While this DOOH initiative was just one component of a larger omnichannel campaign, the program accelerated consumption growth in winter by 13% year-over-year (YoY) in liters during Australia’s winter months, equating to 100,000 incremental pints consumed. Not only did the campaign result in more pints in hands but it also drove an +18% increase in revenue YoY.

The results from this campaign demonstrate the OOH business case for food and beverage brands looking to get closer to their target audiences. By harnessing the technology and data capabilities in DOOH advertising, Guinness expanded reach and awareness through audience-based and point-of-interest targeting, while also driving conversions through the use of QR codes and weather triggers.

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