Guinness takes a go-slow path to creator marketing

Guinness has no plans to sign up creators en masse, and its global marketing manager and head of sport Paddy Carberry says rushing into trends would damage the brand's hard-won cool. "The minute we start getting involved in trends and social media stuff, all of a sudden we become the dad dancing at the disco," Carberry said during a live recording of the Unofficial Partner sports business podcast, recorded in partnership with agency Sid Lee.

For a brand that takes nearly two minutes to pour, Guinness sees no reason to hurry. Its creator strategy will build organically, at the brand's own pace. That restraint reflects how the brand rebuilt its standing during the pandemic.

How Guinness earned its cool behind the bar

Carberry traces much of the brand's turnaround to the pandemic. With pubs shut and most suppliers chasing unpaid bills, Guinness "extended our credit to all of our customers," he said. It sent its unsold beer off to fertilize Christmas trees. Landlords and bar staff noticed. In Carberry's view, nobody has more sway over what gets ordered than the person pulling the pint. The brand's ads played up the wait for the pub to come back. By the time doors reopened, Guinness was one of the pints people had missed.

That history explains the apprehension toward creators. The brand's cool was earned behind the bar, and a flood of sponsored posts could undo that work.

What role do creators actually play?

Most of the creators who helped the revival were not on the payroll. London's pint-rating accounts turned judging other people's pours into a spectator sport. Kim Kardashian and Olivia Rodrigo did the brand favors without a Diageo brief. "Splitting the G" — the ritual of drinking the foam down to the harp logo — had been doing the rounds in pubs since at least 2018, when it earned an Urban Dictionary entry.

Guinness has nudged things along where it made sense. Its social team spent 2014 amplifying rituals drinkers had already invented and added a layer of curated influencer partnerships. The skill, as Carberry tells it, lies in knowing which moments to touch and which to leave well alone.

"While we lean into creators in appropriate ways we probably do less than you'd expect," said Carberry.

Why 'Singing Pints' worked

The "Singing Pints" campaign shows the model in action. It launched in 2023 and was revived over the summer. It drew on the viral #SingingGuinness TikTok trend, where pubgoers poked faces into the creamy foam head of their pints and blew across them to make the foam "mouths" open and close.

"We took what was the consumer playing with the brand and amplified it into a TV spot," said Carberry. "That was one of most successful pieces of content for the last 10 years."

Is Guinness really doing influencer marketing?

Analysts argue it already is, just in a different form. "Guinness might not consciously be signing people up as creators, but 'splitting the G' has turned plenty of ordinary drinkers into exactly that," said Jon Williams, founder and chief creative officer at Freedom Works. "They're creating something to show their mates, in a pub, around a brand. That should be an ambition for any marketer: giving people something they want to do in real life, which then gives them something worth sharing on a screen."

This puts Guinness closer to where influencer marketing began. Before follower counts became a media currency, brands courted bloggers with tight-knit readerships and locals whose word carried on their own patch. The industry then spent a decade turning those relationships into a reach game. Guinness still takes part, but carefully.

What do the rules allow?

The brand also has less room for error than most. In the U.K., anyone drinking in an alcohol ad has to be, and look, over 25. The brand cannot advertise anywhere more than a quarter of the audience is under 18. That is a hard thing to promise on TikTok. The Advertising Standards Authority banned Au Vodka ads last year for exactly that. Carberry noted advertising regulations are "stricter and stricter around the world."

Elsewhere in the briefing: numbers to know

• 34%: average percentage of a brand's video that TikTok viewers watch on the app.
• $3.4 million: the amount by which The Trade Desk's revenue declined during Q3 2026.
• $34.1 million: total CTV revenue Nexxen reported during its Q3 earnings.
• 14%: the drop in Nvidia's stock following the resignation of its CEO.

The Trade Desk's CEO Jeff Green, on the company's quarterly revenues during the Q3 2026 earnings call: "While these results are above what we expected for this quarter, this level of growth is, of course, well below the level of growth that we expect from ourselves in the future… I'm encouraged by our progress, and I am proud of our team. But I want to be very clear, we are not satisfied."

Guinness will keep creators in a smaller role than the creator economy narrative assumes, betting that community management and real-world rituals beat a rush of sponsored posts — and that restraint, not reach, is what keeps the brand worth sharing.