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Matthew Burns:
Oh my God. Oh my gosh, guys. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Stephen, go, go, go. Look at that face. This is it.

Stephen Semple:
There is so much to unpack in that ad.

Matthew Burns:
I wanted you guys to see the reaction. I couldn’t even get to the record button fast enough to catch it all. It was so good. Show Stephen Semple something he’s not seen and he has a visceral emotional reaction to, and it’s an advertisement, and it was a UK ad. Okay, wait here, just watch.

Narrator: He waits. That’s what he does. And I’ll tell you what. Tick followed tock followed tick followed tock followed tick. Ahab says, ‘I don’t care who you are, here’s to your dream.’ The old sailors returned to the bar. ‘Here’s to you, Ahab!’ And the fat drummer hits the beat with all his heart. Here’s to waiting.

Stephen Semple:
So there’s a couple of things that they also did really brilliantly. So many things, but one of the ones I want to point out is not only were they talking to people who are not their customers, they were also sharing secret language with their customer.

There’s a whole thing. If you’re a Guinness lover like I am, one of the things that they always talk about is you have to wait for a Guinness, because the proper way to pour a Guinness is you take it up about three quarters of the way. You stop, you let it settle. There’s a whole little saying about even God took a day off, and then you fill it up, and then when it’s put in front of you, you don’t start drinking that sucker until it has settled. Right? So that whole thing of to wait is actually also speaking to Guinness lovers. It’s part of the ritual of drinking a draft Guinness, and when somebody does it improperly, you’re like, throw that out. Pour it right. You heathen, right?

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely.

Stephen Semple:
Now, the other thing I think that’s brilliant was we know there’s a real glamor to black and white, but also Guinness is black and white. Even the way they showed the horse, there’s so much in that ad that was unbelievably powerful, even to their tribe. Now, to outside their tribe, that whole bragging at the par, shared experience, all that other stuff was just fabulous.

Matthew Burns:
No words for the first 20 seconds of the ad. It was a long intro.

Stephen Semple:
Yes, it was.

Matthew Burns:
Okay. A long intro, and you just see this guy and you don’t know why you’re looking at him. He’s not looking at the camera. If you look at it, he’s looking out past the camera. His heart is starting to well up because he sees the thing that he’s searching for – that thing. He’s finally, that moment, he’s weathered, his face is weathered. He goes through the entire emotional journey. They don’t tell you how to feel. They talk about the standing still of time, the tick after tock after, followed by tock, followed by tick, followed by tock, followed by tick.

And then he gets in, he does his thing. Everybody, all his buddies are crashing all around him, and he stands on the top of the wave. He finally had a successful run on that wave. That’s the wave he’s wanted his entire life. Then they celebrated, and then you catch that glimpse of just pure joy of him at the end. Then Guinness, all of that for a minute, and I would say 20 seconds, a minute and 15 seconds until you know it’s Guinness ad.

Stephen Semple:
Yes. Well, and I also don’t know if you caught on onto this, it was also retro. It was old boards, old bathing suits.

Matthew Burns:
Yes. So I like that. Brilliantly done.

Stephen Semple:
There’s so many layers to that we could spend two hours tearing apart a lot of the techniques that they used in it. It was just magical.

Matthew Burns:
And I love the use of audio. There was some of the audio that I wasn’t sure on, but then when I watched it the second and third time, I was like, okay, because you’re going to get exposed to an ad two or three times. And so the first time I heard it, I was like, okay, this is good. But it was the stopping of audio then the bringing it back up, the slow entry of audio, the starting and finishing the same way. There was so much use of proper portals and liminal space that. Again, Portals, liminal space, Wizard Academy guys. You got to take Portals to understand some of this, but it was brilliantly done.

Stephen Semple:
I’ve been speaking about this more kind of in Q&As when I’ve been out at speaking engagements – and in this ad speaks to it. One of the biggest mistakes that I see happening in advertising and in marketing today is the people working in it are not artists. One of the things that makes us unique as Wizard of Ads partners is the vast majority of our partners, certainly the ones from the creative side, not the strategists, but the ones from the creative side overwhelmingly, are artists.

They’re people like Monica who’s a playwright, or Mick who’s a musician, or Daniel Whittington. And when we say musician, not that they can play music. They were touring musicians or they were studio, they made a living. They made a living in their artistry or their people like Chris Maddock, who was taught by Michener how to write. That’s not business writing. Michener wasn’t teaching him that stuff. They’re artists.

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely.

Stephen Semple:
And the great ads that we see, ones like that, that was not created by some marketing guy, that was created by an artist. Artists know how to tap into emotions and tell emotional stories using sound and visuals and all those other things, and then it’s put in front of people and we go, well, what do you think? Wrong goddamn question.

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely.

Stephen Semple:
Now I go intellectual.

Matthew Burns:
Yep.

Stephen Semple:
Should have been, what did it make you feel?

Matthew Burns:
How did this make you feel? What was the emotion that stirred up?

Stephen Semple:
How did this make you feel? What did you feel when you were watching this? That’s the important question, because we make decisions emotionally, people. Let the artistry come through.

Matthew Burns:
No, brilliantly said. I mean, listen, this is highly, highly recognized as a fantastic ad, and we’re definitely not the first ones to talk about it. I just happened to just see it and I thought, what a beautiful story that has. And like you said, it has place and time. Okay, I’m going to totally rip off your four ingredients, but it has place in time, it has character. Absolutely had characters and loads and loads of emotion. If you didn’t feel in that ad, then I don’t think you’re human. I think that’s the thing.

Stephen Semple:
And the character part was really strong because when he was staring and you saw his face, we made up all sorts of things about him.

Matthew Burns:
A hundred percent, absolutely.

Stephen Semple:
There was time. We knew it was retro, right?

Matthew Burns:
Oh yeah. No, it was fabulous. Absolutely fabulous.

Matthew Burns:
And then his emotion, again, I go back to it was an entire journey in a minute and 15 seconds, I say, and I’m making up story as I’m telling you this, he must have been waiting for that wave for his whole life. The power and the joy, he was the only one that mastered it by the end of it. And everybody congratulated him in. That whole idea that it’s a social experience. Drinking a Guinness is a social experience. Most people aren’t pounding Guinnesses on the armchair while they’re watching a movie, right? They’re out at a pub they’re experiencing that. They talk about, they hint at that in the ad without telling you that. And I was like, it just gave me goosebumps watching it.

Stephen Semple:
Here’s the other thing that they did in this ad. One of the most powerful emotions that you can ever speak to, if you can tap into it, is secret desires. Now, when we take a look at studies today for middle-aged men in the world, middle-aged men are suffering a epidemic of loneliness. And there’s all sorts of reasons why, and there’s a bunch of psychologists that are now studying this because it’s a real problem. Guinness in that ad also spoke to the male bonding, the desire of hanging out with your tribe, the doing things together, that shared experience. That’s the other reason why that ad is going to really hit strong with middle-aged men.

Matthew Burns:
There we go.

Stephen Semple:
There’s also that secret desire and they spoke to it.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and we talk about things like trying to get yourself to right to an affinity group of some sort, right? To really lean into the feelings and the emotions that they’re already feeling and making them feel it double and triple now just builds those cognitive pathways between brand and emotion, right? So no, this is a lot of fun. Thank you.

Stephen Semple:
Brilliant ad.

Matthew Burns:
Like you said, we could talk more and more and more about this. If you guys want us to do a follow up and break down a lot more of the key parts of this, talk about the psychology of what was done here. Let us know, but thanks for letting me surprise you with another one.

Stephen Semple:
Oh, it fabulous.

Matthew Burns:
I couldn’t have gotten a better response. I thought that was fantastic. Okay. Thank you everybody. We’ll see you on the next episode.

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