I used to think a good marketer was someone who came up with the idea. The more original, the better.
I’ve changed my mind, and a pint of Guinness is a big reason why.
A category under pressure
Beer sales overall have been under pressure. Guinness kept growing. Sit with that for a second, right? When the whole category is soft, you’d expect everyone to feel it.
Most of us, when numbers dip, reach for the same reflex. A new campaign. A new slogan. A new push to be noticed. We assume the answer has to come from inside the building.
The game nobody assigned
Then there’s “Split the G.” Take your first sip so the foam line lands in the middle of the “G” on the glass. That’s it. That’s the challenge.
Guinness didn’t invent it. It spread organically, and the brand leaned in instead of pretending it had planned the whole thing.
I mean, think about how unusual that is. Many brands would have rushed to trademark it, brand it, put a logo and a hashtag on it. Guinness did the quieter thing. It noticed, and it amplified.
Why a ritual is stronger than a message
A message asks for your attention. A ritual asks for your participation.
Once a pint becomes a small game, it becomes a shared identity too. You’re not just drinking a beer. You’re doing the thing people who like this beer do. You can show it, compare it, get it wrong and try again.
That’s something an advertisement struggles to give anyone. And it works partly because it didn’t come from a marketing deck. It came from the people using the product, so it carries a kind of trust that you can’t schedule.
What the numbers say, and what they don’t
Here’s what’s verified. Guinness European sales were up 24% in the prior year, and the brand has had double-digit growth for six years, according to Fortune in March 2024, citing Diageo results. There were also reports of supply shortages in the UK amid demand.
I want to be careful, though. You can’t credit all of that to Split the G. It’s one contributing trend, not the whole explanation. Anyone who tells you a single ritual produced those figures is selling a neater story than the facts allow.
Still, a contributing trend is worth paying attention to, especially when it’s one you didn’t have to build.
The discipline of noticing
This is the part I find hardest as an operator. Noticing is less glamorous than creating. There’s no launch moment. Nobody applauds you for watching your customers closely and staying out of the way.
But it takes real discipline. You have to resist the urge to take over. You have to accept that the best idea in your category might not carry your name.
For founders and students alike, I think that’s the uncomfortable lesson. We’re trained to prize authorship. Sometimes the smarter move is stewardship.
A different question
So the next time you’re in a brainstorm, trying to invent the next big thing, try asking something else first: what are our customers already doing with this that we haven’t properly noticed?
The real question isn’t how to create a ritual. It’s whether you’re paying enough attention to recognize one when it shows up.
