Guinness goes mobile for 250th anniversary with iPhone app

I recently found out a story about Guinness running a mobile competition with the Metro newspaper in Canada. Based around 2d barcodes, the winner of competition gets a free holiday to Dublin. Not just a once-off, this is part of a consolidated mobile marketing effort on behalf of Guinness another part of which you can see today with the launch of a new iPhone app, the GUINNESS Pub Finder.

The pub finder is a beautiful mixture of “have a drink” and “be responsible”. It incorporates GPS, geo-location, email, tutorials on how to pour a pint and a “perfect pint ruler”  but also has a section on DRINKiQ, to let you know how much is enough and how to be responsible. That’s fine, but of most interest is the “Locate a Pint” feature, which gives you directions to the nearest Guinness-serving pub. Once you’ve located a pub, you can then email the address and contact details on to your friends from within the app. Then comes “Know Your Pint”. This has a graphic tutorial on how to pour a pint, and a ruler with which you can measure the standard of your pint: All of that is useless for us Irish people, of course, because we know from birth everything there is to know about Guinness. There is also an “extras” section with facts and wallpapers and other rubbish that people won’t be interested in. I’m liking the mobile focus of Guinness for this campaign. As with many other beer companies, the realisation has come that people are quite likely to pass around their mobile at the pub, so that everyone can have a look at their new app. Pubs are a fantastic location for mobile content to spread viraly, and alcohol producers are starting to take advantage. Although it’s a sad fact that this America-targeted app is completely pointless. Everyone knows you can’t a get a decent pint of Guinness outside of Ireland.