Guinness / 1827 onward
How an Irish beer became part of a Nigerian story
1:19 / A short film by Chirag SpeaksWatch on YouTube
A brand can arrive from somewhere else and still become part of the way people see themselves. This film looks at Guinness in Nigeria, the relationship between a global product and local identity, and the stories that help a brand become familiar.
The question to take with you
Are you asking people to understand where your brand comes from, or giving it a place in their own story?
A closer look at the history
Different places and dates matter.
Guinness identifies its first recorded shipment to the African continent as Sierra Leone in 1827. It dates the brewery at Ikeja, Nigeria, to 1962.
Those are distinct events. The film brings several stages of the brand's African history together; the sources help separate that chronology from the interpretation about identity.
Read the film transcript
From the published automatic captions, with names, spelling and punctuation cleaned. The history notes above provide context for the original narration.
Guinness is from Africa, says the Nigerian. Fly from Dublin to Lagos and you'll find that there are two Guinnesses in the world. This one is stronger, darker, and they drink more of it than Ireland. And the story of how it became theirs, well, it starts with independence and ends with an African James Bond. Welcome back to The Stories They Told: How Brands Have Shaped the World, episode 10. Guinness first arrived in West Africa in 1827 on British colonial ships.
When Nigeria gained independence in 1960, Guinness didn't pull back and instead they built a brewery in Lagos and started brewing with local sorghum and maize. Then came the slogan, Guinness gives you power. Ads showed successful African men in suits and in 1999, they created Michael Power, an African James Bond saving the day with the catchphrase, Guinness brings out the power in you. By 2007, Guinness had surpassed Ireland to become the second largest Guinness market in the world. Guinness understood that a newly independent nation wasn't looking for an Irish import.
They were looking for symbols of who they were becoming. Local ingredients, local heroes, and local pride. Entering market becomes less about telling people who you are and more about who they can become. And giving them a character that they could look up to turns product into identity. My name is Chirag, The Brand Historian, and in our next story, we'll see how one sip rewrote global alliances and made this soda brand the world's sixth largest navy.
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