Guinness Storehouse Welcomes Jasmine Guinness Home to Launch Ambassador Programme for ‘The Gathering’

Jasmine Guinness at the Guinness Storehouse

Yesterday, Jasmine Guinness launched the Guinness Storehouse Ambassador Programme as part of the year of ‘The Gathering’. The programme invites Irish residents to apply online for 1 of 50,000 exclusive ambassador cards entitling them to complimentary admission to the Guinness Storehouse throughout 2013. Friends and family who come home for ‘The Gathering’ will also receive a 10% discount off admission.

Paul Carty, Managing Director of the Guinness Storehouse commented that “during the year of ‘The Gathering’, Irish people are encouraged to invite family and friends ‘home’ to Ireland. We want to reward and encourage those who get behind this special year for Irish tourism by opening our doors to them, free of charge, throughout the year. The Guinness Storehouse is the ‘Home’ of Guinness, and in celebration of ‘The Gathering’, our 50,000 ambassadors are welcome to make our home theirs”.

Welcoming the announcement, Jim Miley, Project Director of the Gathering Ireland 2013 said “we’re delighted to see that the Guinness Storehouse is rolling out the green carpet for visitors to Ireland throughout 2013, the year of the Gathering. The concept of the Gathering is based on a personal invitation from the people of Ireland to our friends, family and connections overseas. The Guinness Storehouse ambassador programme will facilitate those of us hosting gatherings to offer our guests a unique experience at one of Ireland’s most popular attractions”.

Throughout the year, active ambassadors will be entered into a competition to win their own Gathering party for 100 of their friends in the Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse with food, refreshments and entertainment provided. Card holders will also be offered a range of benefits during 2013 including exclusive competitions to win tickets to Guinness events, Guinness merchandise and a range of special Guinness Storehouse experiences to be won throughout the year.

Guinness: Example's Arthur's Day 2012 Challenge

As I mentioned in my previous post, Example will be one of this year's Arthur's Day artists. So ahead of his surprise performance in one of the 500 'Vote For Your Local' pubs on Arthur’s Day, Example created this exclusive video in response to the challenge to name the 500 Arthur’s Day pubs in the time it takes to pour a pint of Guinness...

Famed Privateer Captain Henry Morgan's Lost Fleet Found

Many people don't realise that Captain Henry Morgan was a real person. Not only that but before he became associated with the famous rum baring his name, he was a Privateer working throughout the Caribbean. One of the great mysteries around Captain Morgan is the location of his sunken fleet of five ships that disappeared off the Coast of Panama in 1671. However, for the third year in a row, with the help of the Captain Morgan brand, a team of leading U.S. archaeologists have been scouring the mouth of the Chagres River in Panama in search of this lost fleet.

“Morgan was one of the most infamous privateers of all time, so for me, this is a chance to use archaeological research to bridge the gap between science and pop culture. Most people associate Morgan with the image on a bottle, but in reality, he was an iconic historical figure who accomplished incredible feats throughout the Caribbean,” said Frederick “Fritz” H. Hanselmann, underwater archaeologist and Research Faculty with the River Systems Institute and the Center for Archaeological Studies at Texas State University who has been leading the team in an effort to locate, excavate and preserve the remains of Morgan’s lost ships.

Hanselmann continued, “Locating his lost ships and being able to properly preserve and share it with the public is our ultimate goal with this project. We’re really close – and at the end of the day, his ships are down there and we’re going to find them.”

The story of the search for the lost fleet began back in September 2010 when the archeological team discovered six iron cannons off the coast of Panama belonging to Captain Morgan. The next breakthrough then came last summer with the discovery of a 17th century wooden shipwreck, which is believed to be one of the five ships Morgan lost in 1671 on the shallow Lajas Reef. The fleet included his flagship Satisfaction.

Returning to Panama this summer, the team excavated a host of historic artifacts from the shipwreck in hopes of confirming its origin. During this work, the team recovered a sword, chests, wooden barrels and multiple cargo seals. The artifacts, which are currently housed at Patronato Panamá Viejo (Old Panama Trust) in Panama City, will undergo the preservation process before being studied further and verified by London-based experts in English artillery.

“For us, there’s no better way to communicate the values and unwavering spirit of our brand than by unearthing the real-life history of its inspiration,” said Tom Herbst, Brand Director, Captain Morgan USA. “This adventure that we’ve embarked on truly embodies the character of Morgan himself and the free-spirited nature of rum. In our case, we don’t have to make up a brand story – ours is real and it’s waiting to be discovered at the bottom of the ocean floor.”

Captain Henry Morgan was one of the few men to survive the treacherous life on the high seas long enough to enjoy his successes. From 1664 to 1671, Morgan led daring raids throughout the Spanish Main, resulting in riches for him and his men far beyond what they ever expected.

In 1670, Morgan amassed the largest fleet in the history of the Caribbean and set his sights on Panama City, the richest city in the western hemisphere. While en route, his flagship and four additional ships ran aground on the Lajas Reef at the base of Fort San Lorenzo, the military base that guarded the mouth of the Chagres River – the only water passageway leading toward Panama City. Despite the setback, Morgan and his men prevailed, securing Fort San Lorenzo, sailing up the Chagres and ultimately making their way by foot through the dense rainforest to take Panama City.

All artifacts excavated through the project will remain the property of the Panamanian government and will be preserved and displayed by the Patronato Panamá Viejo in Panama City.

Three launches ‘S’Up’ Campaign

Three have just launched their latest campaign with everyone's favourite music and reality crazy kids, Jedward. The campaign, which announces Three's new “All you can eat” data on Prepay, will hit TV screens tomorrow evening (5th August) and run for five weeks until 11th September 2011. The campaign uses 30 second placements on RTE, TV3, 3E, Sky packages, Comedy Central, MTV E!, Living and E4. Aside from the TV slots, the campaign will also run online rich media banners on yahoo, MSN, Ryanair, Facebook, and Skype. Finally, the campaign will also use targeted press advertising and special builds in Dublin’s city centre.

The campaign was developed by McCann Erickson and the TV ad was directed by Damien O’Donnell, who has directed the films; ‘East is East’, ‘Heartlands’, and ‘Inside I’m Dancing’, and produced by Russ Russell of Russell Curran Productions.

The TV ad features Jedward calling, texting and tweeting each other all day long. This may not appear unusual given the close bond the twins share, but what is different about Jedward is that they call text and tweet each other even when they’re in the same room, because it costs them nothing on Three Prepay. They can call each other to say hello or in Jedward’s case ‘S’Up?’ and make sure they don’t miss what’s going on even for a minute.

So we have TV, online and press so far, but the most interesting part of the campaign is the in-store POS and PR activity, which will focus on recruiting a third member of Jedward via on-street and social media auditions to spend a day with Jedward at a secret Three Ireland Jedward gig on 16th September. Lucky Three Prepay customers will receive a special Jedmail inviting them!

Commenting on the launch, Sales and Marketing director, Elaine Carey at Three, said: “We at Three are very excited to be launching ‘All you can eat’ data for our Prepay customers, marking another important first in the Irish market for Three. From Friday the 5th of August, Three Prepay customers can avail of the exclusive ‘All you can eat’ data price plan for the first time, giving unlimited mobile internet access, free any network texts, and free Three to Three calls, all for just €20 a month minimum top up. To celebrate this we are offering the Samsung Galaxy Europa on Prepay for just €49, an amazing price for a great Smartphone, with the ‘All you can eat’ data plan allowing Three Prepay customers to make the most of its enhanced social media functionality.”

Commenting on the launch, Emma Sharkey, McCann Erickson, said: “Jedward’s star power and their ubiquitous popularity will help Three to reach a larger prepay audience. Jedward’s youthful energy and innate sociability are a natural fit with the brand’s Prepay proposition. Three understands that people want the ability to stay in constant contact with their closest friends through texts, social sites and calls, without fear of burning through credit.”

For further information on Three, the new offer or the handset, just visit www.three.ie and be sure to follow Three on Twitter and Facebook.

Great Advertising, Great Videos

Today I had the pleasure of attending Damien Mulley's Online PR Training Course. Expect a full blog on it tomorrow, for now however, there are three video that I wanted to share with you. These are great international examples of how top brands are approaching advertising in completely different ways.

First up is NikeFootball's latest tv ad from Italy. Nike's approach is a hi-tech combination of stunning graphics and straight out football skill.

The second video isn't actual an ad but is definitely brilliant (inho). Levi's sent these cool pop-up closets to six popular fashion magazines in the Netherlands and Belgium. The fold out drawers were filled with several items from the new Levi’s collection.

Finally, the third video I have for you comes from Diesel. Diesel have gone a completely different route, and while this is a proper video ad, it relies completely on copy. This is brilliant copywriting and shows that you don't necessarily need huge sums of money to make a great video.

Wieden + Kennedy 12: Fail Harder

This definitely has to be one of my favourite things that I've seen from Wieden + Kennedy 12.

The project was to create a mural, which they did with over 100,000 thumbtacks and over 351 hours (in the process they bought out all available clear push pins on the west coast of the US). The mural spells out Fail Harder. W+K12 runs by the philosophy of the importance of failure during the creative process to ultimately create stunning and impactful creatives.



Wieden + Kennedy 12 is an experimental advertising school run by Portland ad agency W+K

Street Performance World Championships

I was delighted to get invited to last night's Street Performance World Championships Corporate Evening, hosted by Emergent Events, in The Sugar Club. Going on last night (Tuesday 14 July) and tonight (Wednesday 15 July), the event is a corporate showcase and networking event to show off some the best street performers in the world.

The guys at Emergent Events are the official agents for some of the SPWC's best performers; including Beautiful Stu; Senmaru; Charlie Caper (winner of Sweden's Got Talent); Grant GoldieJack Wise and the world renowned Space Cowboy.

Mark, Conor and Dan are the gents in question, and I highly recommend that anyone hosting a corporate event of any kind gives them a call.

Check out the following videos as a taste of what we enjoyed...

The Kilkenny Push

As part of our 10 year birthday celebrations in Cybercom we made a commitment to work with a number of charities. The first charity we've been working with was Moving Mountains. I have posted several times already about Moving Mountains, and its founder Gavin Bate's, recent Everst climb.

Richie Fitgerald, one of the two lucky Cybercom staff who were selected to go to Everest to support Gavin in his attempt, is going an extra mile (81 extra miles actually!) this weekend to raise money for Moving Mountains. Richard and a team of 30 are moving a 10ft polystyrene mountain from Dublin to Kilkenny. Yesterday while Richie hit the road at 9am to start running to Naas. Then today it was on through Castledermot and Carlow, to get to Kilkenny. All day tomorrow the crew will hard at work in Kilkenny to raise as much as possible. On Firday some of the Cybercom crew took to Grafton Street to do some collecting.


If you pass the guys anywhere along the way be sure to give them a beep or make a donation to the cause. For more information on the charity, visit www.movingmountains.org.uk and to support the event visit www.justgiving.com/cybercom_moving_a_mountain.

A New Irish Agency: Radical

Thursday saw the launch of a new Irish Digital Agency with the merger of Captivate Digital and Interactive Return, to form Radical. The two companies were already both part of Publicis Media. This move is a clear confirmation of the continued increasing market demand for integrated digital marketing solutions.

Radical describes itself as offering client solutions for search engine marketing, online advertising, search engine optimisation, web design & development, web analytics, email marketing, social media marketing, online public relations, usability, and online marketing training.

"This is a very exciting time for us," commented Martin Murray, Managing Director of Radical. "Offline marketing spend is down 30% in 2009. Due to its greater measurability and accountability, online marketing is still showing steady growth in Ireland. Digital marketing is expected to grow to 27% of total advertising spend in the UK in 2009 and we expect Ireland to follow suit over the coming years."

John Dunne, Strategy Director of Radical said, "This merger makes a lot of sense for our clients. Radical will deliver integrated digital marketing solutions across all online channels."

News of the impending changes was first released as a teaser through the Interactive Return twitter account (now rebranded for Radical) with this post:


From here the following news was then tweeted on Thursday morning at the same time as the Captivate Digital and Interactive Return press conference:



Considering the recent Cybercom campaign in conjunction with Gavin Bate, this is yet another example of Social Media being put to the forefront of marketing. I don't think anyone can question the necessity for companies to pull up their socks and get with the Social Media (and Digital) program. It ain't going away, and is going to continue to increase in importance and prominence.

Good luck to the guys in Radical!

Male Copywriter

There are very few people not effected by the current global economic situation. Whatever sector you work in, you probably know people who have been laid off. But what if you are one of those people. What if, following 15 years of hard grift, you find yourself 'let go'?

Hope and pray that it all gets better? Pretend you know anything about coffee other then how to drink it and become a barista in the local Starbucks?

As Carlsberg would have us think, it's not always A or B, there's probably a C. And sure enough, if you're Lawson Clarke, there definitely is. It might be a little 'out there' but at the very least, it's a way to get known.

After his 15 years of copywriting for clients like Ocean Spray, Carnival and Strongbow, Lawson was another casualty of 'uncertain times' and found himself without work. Not willing to let his unemployment stop him, he created his site: Male Copywriter.

This is essential viewing.

In some sort of crazy cross between Ron Burgandy and Dirk Diggler, Lawson demonstrates him impressive work profile against a backdrop of 70's style porn shoot, with Lawson atop a bear skin rug, hair cheast cascading down his front, and the Star Spangled Banner belting through your speakers. Hopefully the tongue is firmly in the cheek, as if this is anything other then SNL style humour we should all be very scared. None-the-less, this is still must see digital and a potential 'how-to' for anyone else out of work with a bit of creative ability.

Red Dwarf is Back!

This weekend Red Dwarf is coming back to TV on Dave with the backing of a kickass digital marketing campaign. Red Bee Media have created an online treasure hunt inviting fans to find the crews landing location on Google Earth. The game started with an email sent to 55,000 fans, which contained codes and hidden links. The game also utilised a number of ARG style elements; including a personal ad for ‘The Cat' on Gumtree, an ad for two of the crew to rent a flat in Mayfair, and two websites: Lister's Coming Home and Scanning Jupiter.

Along side this, there were also a series of 'subliminal messages' featured on Dave and its website. Flashes of an image of the Red Dwarf spacecraft with the logo ‘Red Dwarf has landed' were run at several key times during the last couple of weeks, resulting in 438,492 site visitors in just four days.

Online PR for Royals

As most of you are probably aware, it's not a new thing to have celebrities posting their own YouTube content. It's not even new to see a royal face or two, consider that The Royal Family (UK) has their own YouTube Channel. What is interesting is to take a look at the more innovative and progressive political uses of YouTube by these people.

Don't worry, while I am a fan of Mr. Obama I'm not going to talk about him. In my opinion the most progressive political use of YouTube that I have seen lately is from the Middle East. In fact, from a woman in the Middle East. I accept that that may sound odd to some people, considering the general western perception is of a region where leaders are not interested in freedom of speech and women don't appear publicly in politics. So when I say that the most progressive political use of YouTube I have seen to date is a young Arab female, I'd forgive you for being surprised.

Queen Rania is etting the trend and opening barriers for women and men alike, throughout the Middle East. She not only has her own YouTube channel on YouTube that promotes open dialogue and freedom of expression, but she is actively striving to breakdown the stereotypes that exist about Arabs and Muslims.

Her activities have even won her the Visionary Award on YouTube Live '08.

A Blogger and PR Exec walk into a bar...

Ok so it wasn't a bar, it was Edelman's offices on Stephens Green, but there were Bloggers and PR types. All in all the format was simple, a member of each camp gave an overview of what each group are all about, and then we had a group Q&A.

So what did we talk about?

The subject that probably took up the most of our time was how to approach Bloggers, from the perspective of a PR agency. In my own opinion I found it somewhat funny that the main piece of information that the PR guys would walk away with was that Bloggers aren't paid for what we do and we therefore generally have no interest in acting as brand representatives for some global corp. Further to this, it is common practise to send journalists and tv/radio types samples/tickets/freebies (etc. etc.) and yet no one ever thinks of doing the same to Bloggers.

Hopefully the PR guys really did walk away with an understanding that to communicate with anyone, Blogger or not, it is best done on a personal level. Isn't that what every ad tries to do - interact with someone as an individual? Why would you do it differently when you're actually trying to communicate with an individual.

There's another session planned for February, drop Damien a comment if you'd like to go. I'd highly recommend it.

On that note - a huge thanks to Damien for organising the whole thing. Bang up job. Cheers to Piaras too for the kind use of the venue.

Bloggers and PR Guys

I was lucky enough to get my name on a list to attend an event I'm really excited about. On the Jan 21st Damien Mullay has organised a get together between a collection of Irish bloggers and a team of PR folk. The event, happening the Edelman offices on Stephen's Green, is a chance for us bloggers to gain a better understanding of what it is PR is trying to achieve, and how it's trying to achieve it, while allowing the PR people to talk to us blog types and find out what it is we do, and why we do it.

Having studied Public Relations myself I think I have a good idea of what Irish PR is doing. However, as a blogger and digital marketer I also know that they're rapidly falling behind the times. PR needs to reinvent itself with a serious amount of time spent focusing on understanding modern social media.

For anyone interested in going along, pop over to Damien's blog and drop him a comment. I'm not sure if all the places are full yet or not, but pop along and have a check.