Guinness Uses Real-Time Data On Digital Posters To Pull People To Pubs For Huge Rugby Match

March 17, 2017 by Dave Haynes

If you have an Irish pub in England, or pretty much anywhere, the next couple of days are going to be crazy.

Today, of course, is St. Paddy’s Day, and the real Irish and the mobs of wannabes are guzzling Guinness and Harp and, yuck, green beer. Tomorrow Ireland plays England in the RBS 6 Nations Rugby tournament,which in the rugby world is a very big deal.

Guinness has been running a campaign on JC Decaux digital posters in London that let rugby fans know where they can catch the game. The campaign developed by Carat and Posterscope, and working with Liveposter, automatically serves ads as a match approaches, providing kick off times and distances to nearby pubs that are screening the live match.

A network of sensors fitted in participating pubs captures footfall data and, based on capacity levels, triggers real-time, tailored creative executions to drive fans to the best venues to watch the game.

“This campaign gives audiences upcoming match information and also let’s passers-by know where there’s an available seat nearby to catch the game accompanied by a pint of the official beer of the tournament,” says Elliot Duncan, Guinness Marketing Manager for Europe.

Data-triggered content is going to be central to many or most digital ad and marketing campaigns in the future, and this is a good example of a simple execution that is highly relevant to fans who want to do something, but don’t want to get motivated to go to a location and then be disappointed because there’s no room.

England has already won this event, by the way, but is going for a record in consecutive Test match wins.

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