What would Jem Casey have made of it all? When the poet of the people in Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds penned his lines in praise of the joys of porter, the black stuff was merely an antidote to the miseries of debt, hunger and rasherless depression. But, if we're to believe Guinness's new "Oyster" commercial, which started airing this week on Irish television, it's time to add another stanza to Jem's immortal "pome", something like:
When clothes are scarce and your flesh is bare
And you're wearing just a tan
When fingers probe through your underwear
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN In the 30-second ad, which cinema-goers have been seeing for the last three weeks, but which only hit our TV screens in the last few days, a woman sunbathes on a rock while a man dives into the sea to find an oyster, which he brings back and feeds to her. Sounds like a typical summer's day in Bundoran, but it doesn't quite prepare you for the sheer lubriciousness of the presentation. "There is an obvious intense bond between the couple," says the Guinness press release accompanying the new campaign, which is one way of putting it. The music, something called Pleasant Smell, sounds like Eartha Kitt on ecstasy, and there's some highly suggestive inter-cutting between the quivering oyster flesh and the actress's (model Laura Randall) nether regions. It doesn't take an expert in semiotics to figure out what's going on here. The only question really is whether it's being suggested that supping your humble pint of plain is akin to having a particular sexual act performed by you or on you. The closing shot of a woman contemplating her pint suggests the latter - so now you know, although one wonders if Jem Casey would have been up to the task.
"I don't know about sexy. It's certainly sensual, and that will appeal to younger drinkers," says Kenny Jamieson of Guinness. "But, in terms of older drinkers, there's a recognition that there's a historical link between Guinness and oysters."
Hmmm . . . The definition of "sensual" in my dictionary includes "given to the pursuit of sensual pleasure or the gratification of the appetites; self-indulgent sexually or in regard to food and drink; voluptuous, licentious". Sounds like fun. But even if Oyster is a new benchmark in sexually explicit Irish ads, in truth, there's not an awful lot new under the advertising sun. The current campaign continues a long tradition of Guinness marketing targeted at the younger end of the market.
The new ads come out of a nine-month research process, according to Jamieson. "The strategy is a dual one. Guinness has a huge amount of existing drinkers, but its profile in the marketplace is older than we'd like it to be. Every year, there's 30,000 or 40,000 new potential customers entering the beer market, and it's important that we keep them aware of us. But even older drinkers don't want the product to be seen as fuddy-duddy."
The other ad in the current campaign, Horses, has generated a micro-controversy of its own, with suggestions that it might be seen to encourage suicide. In this one, a man and a woman race each other on horseback towards the edge of the Cliffs of Moher, with the picture freezing, Thelma and Louise-style, as they jump the final wall before the cliff-edge. In the background, a doomy Patti Smith track seems to presage imminent disaster.
Jamieson rebuts any suggestion there's some kind of death wish being celebrated in Horses. "If you look at the commercial, there's a wall beyond the cliff-top, and you can see in previous shots that there's land beyond that wall, so there's an element of suspense about whether they managed to stop in time. If it had come through strongly as an issue in research, we just wouldn't air it, but it didn't."
Sex and death may make for an unbeatable combination, but not all Guinness ads have been unqualified successes. Think of the dreadful (and deeply unfunny) Big Pint campaign, which disappeared off our screens in double-quick time. More successful was the recent "Twins" campaign, although the Guinness ad of the 1990s that people are most likely to remember is Anticipation, with Joe McKinney jigging around while waiting for his pint to settle.
Guinness has tended not to emphasise the Irish connections of the product. One notable exception, and the winner of a recent competition to select the best Irish ad of the century, is the 1977 commercial, Island, with Aran islanders waiting for the currach to arrive with a keg of stout, and memorable cries of "Ta siad ag teacht" and "Aris!".
Island was written by Frank Sheerin, then with Arks, and now with his own creative company. Like most Guinness campaigns of recent years, the new ads are devised and produced by London-based companies, which Sheerin thinks is "a great shame, because it can be done here. Some of the big international brands will always go for a global image, but we're very overshadowed by a highly creative industry in the UK." (Ad campaigns for Guinness in Ireland are separate from those run in the UK, although we get some spill-over through British-based satellite channels).
As for the new campaign, perhaps Guinness should consider taking a leaf out of its best-ever advertisement - there'd be nothing more appropriate, after all, than dubbing in a line like Ta si ag Teacht, or even (if she's lucky) "Aris!".
