Africa is the world’s largest market for Guinness beer (and Nigeria is second only to Britain for the most consumers in one country). The Irish brand’s success on the continent is regarded as a trailblazing business model. And that has a lot to do with their advertising campaigns over the years.
Award-winning sociologist Jordanna Matlon recently published a research paper that analyses three prominent Guinness Africa ad campaigns. She explores what market forces are behind them – and how they target male consumers and shape masculinity in a way that echoes colonial extraction. We asked her to explain.
We can think about Guinness in Africa in two phases. The first was less marketing savvy than old-fashioned imperial domination, in which territories under British dominion were captive markets for British imports. Despite its proud Irish origins, Guinness has had solid connections to the UK since the 1800s.
Following British imperial shipping routes, the brewery began exporting to Africa in 1827. In 1959 Guinness established an import/export arrangement with Britain’s United Africa Company. By the era of African independence from the mid-1950s to the 1970s – the second phase – Guinness was already a well-known brand.
Its advertising strategies found a ready African audience. Like colonialism generally, Guinness linked the consumption of foreign goods to the “civilising mission”. To be a civilised, modern man, the argument went, was to drink what the colonisers dr.