They were presented with the Leader Awards in the Mobile Marketing and Social Media categories on the back of the success of its Guinness Osagyefo Campaign.

The Assegai Awards acknowledges and awards those whose integrated marketing campaigns deliver exceptional results. The Leader Award is based on the final audited campaign scores based on the overall creative concepts, including: copy, graphics and production quality, marketing strategy and results. Leaders are the entries that could qualify in terms of their final audited scores for an Assegai award.

The General Manager for Vizeum Ghana, Mr Emmanuel Odoom, said: “Our media—first thinking approach to strategy implementation requires a greater understanding of media connections in a communication plan across the ecosystem that incorporates all media touchpoints and this contributed greatly to the success of the campaign.”

The Marketing Manager for Guinness, Lebogang Babe, stated: “As an iconic brand in Ghana, the Guinness team wanted to celebrate Ghana’s culture, heritage and history with the rest of the nation as part of the GH@60 celebrations.”

She noted that the special Osagyefo bottle was designed to recognise all the incredible individuals across the country who had demonstrated their ‘made of black’ spirit over the last 60 years.

“We joined forces with the teams to find innovative ways to engage with consumers throughout the celebrations and it is great to have been recognised for the hard work by all of the team,” she said.  

The Guinness Osagyefo Campaign

Ghana celebrated 60 years of independence in 2017 and to mark this, Guinness created a limited-edition bottle, featuring iconic Ghanaian figures and landmarks. Guinness ran promotions to mark the celebration with free WiFi, discounts and prizes.

To drive footfall to these events, the team used geo-targeted Facebook ads – an African Media First. This was the first time a beer brand in Africa has run a geo-targeted Facebook campaign.

Urban Ghanaians are very social online and in bars; but it can be difficult to coordinate plans with friends. The team saw an opportunity to help consumers to make the most of their evening by presenting Guinness experiences close to them, and sharing directions to the party.

The main objective was to drive reach; allowing the team to spread awareness in proximity to bars which were running promotions and drive footfall leading to increased sales.

The campaign reached about 2.3 million people who were over 18 years. During the campaign, brand equity, spontaneous awareness and dynamism scores were all increased.

The uplift in sales during the promotion was 46 per cent higher in bars that were geo-targeted with Facebook adverts and the campaign contributed to increase in sales of 103 per cent year on year for April compared to 2016.