Guinness and that Toucan a great partnership.... The Guinness Toucan Who Knew What a Toucan Could Do? Guinness Stout After relying on word of mouth for 170 years, Guinness rolled out its first advertising campaign in 1929. The memorable tag lines “Guinness is good for you,” “My goodness, my Guinness,” and “Guinness for strength,” quickly embedded in the public consciousness. (The even more striking, though now less publicized, “Drink Guinness for a healthy baby and painless birth” was also an early motto.) These slogans were paired up with whimsical paintings by artist John Gilroy, including iconic posters featuring Guinness-strengthened chaps effortlessly hefting steel girders and pulling horse carts. A fortuitous 1934 visit to a local zoo inspired Gilroy to populate his art with a menagerie of animals, including a pelican, a kangaroo, a sea lion, a turtle, an ostrich and a toucan. The pelican was originally intended to be the star of the group. Gilroy had an idea about encouraging Brits to drink “a Guinness a day,” so the pelican was pictured with its beak loaded with seven pints, accompanied by the verse: A wonderful bird is the pelican, Its bill can hold more than its belly can. It can hold in its beak Enough for a week I simply don’t know how the hell he can. Which didn’t go over so well, making one wonder if it was the word “hell” or the suspicion that the pelican might swallow all seven pints at once that stuck in the public’s craw. Popular mystery writer and poet Dorothy L. Sayers, working on behalf of the advertising firm S.H. Bensons, was tapped to pen a less offensive rhyme. No stranger to homonyms, Sayers came up with this winning ditty: If he can say as you can ‘Guinness is good for you’ How grand to be a Toucan! Just think what Toucan do. Toucan did quite well, thank you very much. Muscling aside the foul-mouthed seabird, the exotic understudy soon became the star of the show. It eventually went solo and in time became synonymous with the Irish stout. After nearly 50 years in the limelight, the toucan was retired in 1982, though a comeback tour has been rumored: in May 2006, Toucan Brew was introduced as part of the Guinness Brewhouse series, and its beak has lately been poking into a number of billboards around the UK. Why It Worked: The toucan’s bright colors and the faraway locale it referenced were a welcome escape from the gray days of the economic depression of the 1930s and the wartime horrors of the 1940s. And its incongruity certainly hooked the imagination: what in high hell was a bizarre-looking tropical bird doing in Britain with a pint balanced on its beak? Evolution: Under Gilroy’s firm hand, the toucan’s physical appearance didn’t vary much during its long rein, aside from its smile becoming more pronounced and mysterious. Its pose, however, changed with the times: it perched on a nest with its mate during the peacetime 1930s, flew in formation during the war, and popped a bottle cap and announced it was “opening time” during the reconstruction of the 1950s. Like most icons, it was never portrayed drinking the product. Dark Secret: In the 1950s the toucan engaged in a bit of political incorrectness: in one ad it is seen wearing an Indian chief’s headdress and addressing the consumer in pidgin English: “Guinness—him strong. See what big chief Toucan do.” Claim to Fame: A 1962 advertising study vetted the Guinness toucan as the most recognizable animal advertising icon in the world.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 04:04:22 +0000
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