It’s one of the staple innovation anecdotes for marketers: “Guinness can’t innovate. Consumers don’t let them. The brand might be iconic but it’s too tied to the product”.

As a result past successes have mainly come from fairly conservative innovations in stouts that stick within well-worn tramlines and play to the perceived strengths of Guinness draught; characterfulness, confidence, complexity, and almost certainly a black colour. Guinness Red  (which, come on, is black) plays by these rules and so did the successful BrewHouse series which our Director of Innovation, Richard Oldham, helped Diageo to develop.

Now though, the brand is being much more brave. Guinness have launched a lager, “Guinness Black Lager”, in Northern Ireland and Malaysia. According to Michael McCann, head of Diageo Northern Ireland, “like all lagers, it is characterised by its refreshing taste. The addition of Guinness expertise, roasted barley and a late hopping imparts a taste that is unique among lagers” and of course… makes it black.

It’s a very interesting departure for Guinness whose only real forays out of stouts have been into licensed merchandise (golf umbrella, anyone?). Certainly some of the hallmarks of successful Guinness innovation are there, but the old marketer’s tale about consumers not allowing the brand to innovate might come true. The danger is that it may be seen as the worst of both worlds: a bad lager and a bad Guinness. As a fan of the brand I only hope they got the product right and that consumers prove the marketers wrong and are open enough to give it a try.

The levees have finally broken. After over a year spent dipping its toe in the water with regional trials in the North and South-East, M&S is starting to sell branded grocery products at all of its stores in the UK.

Normally branding consultants might be tearing their hair out at this news: why are they undermining a point of difference?

But M&S is actually doing the right thing here. The only brands being introduced are in what it calls brand-led categories, e.g., Pantene, Coca Cola, Gordon’s, Marmite, Persil, Kit Kat, Kellogg’s and Heinz. In other words, however hard M&S might try to fabricate a localised monopoly within its stores, these are the kind of destination brands which even regular M&S shoppers would be going elsewhere to pick up. Interestingly, M&S (or rather John Dixon, their Executive Director of Food) divides the brands it’s introducing into two categories:

1. ‘Products that we could simply never compete with, like Marmite and Kit Kat,’ i.e. brands like Guinness which are very closely tied to their product format/flavour/some other intrinsic. While this quality is normally a hindrance to the brands in question because consumers don’t give them ‘permission’ to innovate away from their core, in this case, it’s a quality that means any mimic M&S produce won’t ever be seen as comparable by consumers.

2. ‘Other areas where, whilst we have a great M&S equivalent, the leading brand dominates the market,’ i.e. brands which embody their category and offer the generic, mass-market proposition, e.g. Gordon’s ‘the G in G&T’ and Heinz ‘Heinz Meanz Beanz.’ These are the kind of brands who truly can claim market leader status; all of the marketing muscle they can heft over their central ground makes them basically impossible to unseat. So, as an aside, being selected by M&S as one of these brands is a real accolade, and it’s interesting to think that being chosen and endorsed by M&S may become something brands fight for. And if this is the start of a flood of brands to M&S’s shelves, it may be something that even non-market leading brands may fight for if they believe they have a motivating proposition against the core M&S range in their category.

In any case because the brands being introduced at this stage will only cover 7% of its product range and because they’re the kind of brands M&S simply can’t compete with, I think it’s a smart move. Being brand-free has been a distinct point of difference for M&S, but because that has been to the exclusion of these destination brands, that differentiation has been the wrong kind; it’s been differentiation for its own sake. It’s left consumers frustrated that they either have to put up with a compromised, own-brand alternative they don’t want, or make a second trip to a rival store to pick up what they do want. It’s why The M&S Principle may be a useful short-hand for an important point about differentiation: what matters is owning a compelling position in consumers’ minds. So when it comes to differentiation, motivate, don’t aggravate.

In this series of posts I aim to bring to light off-beat stories from the world of marketing, ranging from serious successes to downright abysmal failures.

In these times of receivership, redundancy and recession people are looking for great offers. So this week I bring you 2 stories for 1 (by the way the second is funnier so keep reading…).

The first is about some beer brands, notably Hobgoblin and Guinness which have jumped at the chance of ‘owning’ Halloween. At first this might seem odd but linking a brand to an occasion can be a powerful marketing tool as it can encourage consumers to believe they are embracing a collective experience in a more authentic way, for example, if they are drinking Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. Obviously that works because Guinness is the Irish beer.

Hobgoblin has an obvious link to Halloween through its name and ghoulish mascot who they are taking on the road this weekend in an inspired piece of brand activation.

For Guinness, other than being dark (which is what the comms plays to), the link is less clear but both brands are conscious of the trend for beer to be consumed away from the on-trade (in pubs and bars) to the off-trade (in kitchens and living rooms). This feels like a response to that shift, an attempt to encourage people to incorporate bottled stouts/ales into their cosy, autumnal nights in. And by hooking into an occasion they may be able to make this habitual. Time will tell but with both being such great beers, I hope it works.

In tune with some previous Friday Tidbits the second story is a bit more ‘interesting’. Inspired by a curious and potentially spoof ad for HundForum, a day-time dogcare brand in Sweden, I briefly pursued a line of research into the range of products and services that are available for pets. We all know about some of the extreme pet pampering, cleaning and massage services that exist in LA but were you aware of a French company called HotDollForDog? I don’t know if this a spoof but particularly if you take a minute to watch the slightly questionable promo video, it does look professionally done.

Very little more need be said but it is interesting as a niche marketing opportunity: firstly because it highlights the existence of niches and how far some (apparently French) consumers are willing to go to satisfy their pets and secondly the importance of a real insight, even to smaller-scale niche marketing. In this case, although I’ve never owned a dog in my life, I am aware of the nightmares friends and relatives of mine have had with the canine abuse of net curtains, the odd thigh or ‘pretty much anything else that’s  going’ as a colleague, James Wallis, revealed.

So hopefully you won’t get nightmares, but there are a couple of stories from the world of marketing to ponder as we wander into the Halloween weekend…