A Look at How Far Advertising Has Come - Guinness Edition

As we all know, there is always a beginning to a story. This story is Guinness. Guinness, one of the most effective and most popular brands in Ireland, was started in 1759. To think that there was still the concept of advertising back then is amazing! When visiting the Guinness brewery, there was an entire section of the tour that was filled with advertising from its past all the way to today. It was quite a unique thing to see. I luckily brought along a camera to capture one of the advertisements; the first one that they ever put out!

I tried to make this one as big as possible so that it is readable. As you can see, advertisements were less attractive back then. It is almost as if it is a newspaper article. Much before Hofstede's Dimensions were developed, this ad showed a very informative piece to advertise. This is strange because in today's culture, Ireland is at a low UAI, meaning this type of ad isn't very effective towards the culture. However different times have different values.

It is quite amazing to see how advertisements can change over time. They change as the culture changes. With more media outlets, from newspapers, to radio, to television, to the computer and the Internet, to who knows what's next, there is certainly going to be changes in advertising. Below are examples of more developed print ads.

Today, print ads have developed even more into more modern print ads as well as video advertisements found online and on television.



Guinness Commercial > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pgA8Z7lFVE

There is no real analysis to be made in this blog post, I've already touched upon how culture can influence advertising to consumers, but this post is mainly to show my appreciation for how amazing it is in how far advertising has come over the ages. It's gone from something so simple as an article in a paper, to something so complex and meaningful such as in the commercial. It's quite astonishing, and I'm sure it will only get better as time goes on! I also, wanted to touch upon the fact that Guinness is a great force in advertising in Ireland. They are EVERYWHERE, and it is easy to tell why they are so beloved by their country. A national symbol indeed.