Vanakam Makkalae.

Today the video is about a campaign that happened 70 years ago. It is the bottle drop challenge by Guinness Beer.

The managing director of Guinness Exports Ltd, Mr A.W. Fawcett had genius sales promotion ideas and publicity stunts. During the summer of 1954, they initiated the idea to drop 50,000 sealed bottles of Guinness Beer from ships at many points of the Atlantic Ocean to make their way to North America. They had greetings messages and the lucky ones will find them washed up on the shore. The lucky ones will receive a memento. Some bottles were found in Tahiti, others from the Bahamas, Liverpool docks, The Azores and Mexico.

The 45 bottles per carton were dropped overboard and the carton was made to disintegrate in sea water.

This idea was initiated by the beer maker that year to commemorate its 200th anniversary. The sales of the brand also soared up.
In 1959, 150,000 specially embossed bottles were dropped in the ocean. Even before 2 years, people found the bottles. When they find out, it will be covered by the media, published in newspapers, etc. They started using them as collectables.

In the past few years, bottles have been found in California, Texas, South Africa, Wales, The Bahamas and Canada. So, the campaign is still working and it is still a huge and innovative campaign.

Instead of spending on TV advertisements and other costly campaigns, this proved to be a cost-effective and successful campaign.