Guinness Area 22

Despite how much I would love to talk about Cricket and the Ashes (260 all out? Actually, forget it!) I'm going to be talking about rugby, and more specifically the Guinness Area 22 PR campaign.

The campaign recently won PR agency Smarts the following awards at the 2010 Northern Ireland CIPR PRide awards:

Gold - Best use of digital PR
Silver - Consumer relations

As part of my third year university course I recently had to give a short poster session presentation about the merits of this campaign. The campaign ran shortly after the end of the 2008 / 2009 rugby season, where Ireland celebrated with a 'Grand Slam' after winning all of their RBS Six Nations games


(Copyright of PA Photos, taken from RBS Six Nations Website)



The aims and objectives of the campaign were to build consumer awareness of Guinness' sponsorship of the Irish rugby squad, and position the Guinness brand as 'the font of all rugby knowledge'.

This is quite an ambitious aim, yet Smarts were able to work with two other agencies to create a digital hub, which comprised a microsite full of rugby news, stats, video highlights and interviews, a Facebook fan page to link with the microsite, and an iPhone app which had video highlights, results, photos and even the words to the national anthems of all teams in the Six Nations!

I believe the campaign did so well because it took an already popular subject matter (rugby) and presented it in a way that enabled its target audience the opportunity to engage with the campaign, which was fronted by 'Team Area 22', formed of Irish rugby players Tommy Bowe, Jerry Flannery and Jamie Heaslip. A launch campaign used some novel approaches including a press event at a local rugby club, where members of the media could meet and have a 'casual chat' with the players, and talk about the forthcoming rugby internationals and Guinness' Area 22.

Over 11 million impressions were achieved across 10 different opportunities, which considering the population of Ireland is around 6.6million people is very impressive! The campaign recorded 35,000 downloads from the iTunes store, achieved an AVE of over £286,000, which led to a ROI figure of £16 for every £1 spent on PR.

All of the journalists and media organisations approached by Smarts responded in a positive manner, with many agreeing that Area 22 was a 'one stop shop' for everything you needed to know about Irish rugby. To prove that the campaign can be sustainable, the Area 22 website is still running, and will be joined by an improved Facebook page and iPhone app for the coming rugby internationals this autumn.

After the presentation, I had to conduct a small group session, so I decided to get 'on board' with the Guinness brand and let my coursemates sample some, whilst filling out a short questionnaire and discussing the campaign's merits and weaknesses. I was actually quite surprised with the number of people who had never tried Guinness before, and although it wasn't popular with everyone, I felt that they all engaged well with the discussion of the campaign.

So what I'll be asking for now is COMMENTS. Lots of them, about anything you wish to discuss or were wondering about the campaign. Also if people have seen / heard the campaign in the past, I'd be very interested to hear what you thought about it all, rugby fan or otherwise.

Paul