2020 Brave Awards winner, Guinness Clear

Guinness Clear is the template for brave, responsible marketing. It’s the story of how, during our biggest sales moment of the year and first year of Six Nations sponsorship, Guinness set the agenda for responsible drinking in sport.

Of how we rebranded ordinary tap water as a cool ‘new’ product, which – packaged with humour and wit – turned ordering water from embarrassing to a positive and popular bar call (just ask all the pub owners who took orders in droves). And of how we drove wholesale behavioural and attitudinal change, became the #1 beer brand associated with responsible drinking and achieved the highest PROI of any ‘Made of More’ campaign ever.

And we won Gold at the Cannes Festival of Creativity, too. It was a risk: we had no precedent, and while Guinness and rugby have long been the perfect complement; competitors were stealing share and our association was dwindling. We could have used the Six Nations to change that, to single-mindedly sell more pints. Or execute around the edges like other responsible drinking...