Champagne Marmite for Lovers

I love this and am going to try to find a pot. As ever great stuff from Marmite. A good build on their Guinness collaboration last year.

Guinness Wholegrain Bread

More marketing innovation from Guinness. Previously we showed Guinness Marmite, the Guinness rugby chair, Guinness Hands, their awesomely clever anamorphic coasters, Guinness Red, their partnership with Le cool and the Guinness blog... now we've got Guinness Wholegrain Bread!

It's been much anticipated but now it's here. From Snackspot:

"Ah thinks the Kaptain, the moanses you told the Snacking Spot of the lack of sightings in the homeland has instead yielded a new reward for the Kaptain. He brings you the Guinness Wholegrain Bread, brew baked in the Northern Ireland by Irwin's bakery. Sampling the bread the Kaptain was rewarded with delicious malty whole wheat tasting trembles. The alkyhols sacrificed in the heats of the oven flames, but the malty beer stenches remaining. The Kaptain wonders if the komarades on foreign shores will enjoy its tastes, he hopes so, he hopes so very much."

"Produced at Irwin's Portadown bakery the bread has an authentic 17 per cent real Guinness content - giving it a richly dark appearance and the unmistakable malty taste of the beer."

Apparently it tastes like dark soda bread and can be bought in Waitrose. Some of the comments also point to the existence of Guinness fudge, which sounds like it didn't go down too well!

To find out more about it read this article from the Irish Times.

It seems that Guinness have updated their thinking and are leveraging their powerful platform with some Marketing Innovation a la John Grant. It's a great way of super charing your brand.

Guinness and Marmite Crossover

From Coolhunting:

"In time for St. Patrick's Day, Guinness yeast extract will be used to make a special spread, limited to 300,000 jars. It's available today 19 February 2007 for around 2.49 from supermarkets in the UK."

Cheryl Calverley, of Marmite, said: "This is the most unusual innovation in our history. We will be watching carefully to see if customers want this as a permanent option."

Here's their post on Flickr:

"Some say it’s madness, others say it’s genius, but this year’s must-have for St Patrick’s Day is new limited edition Guinness™ Marmite Yeast Extract Spread.

Hot on the heels of our recent launch of Guinness Red which you seem to love loads we are launching the iconic Marmite glass jar filled with darker ‘Guinness Marmite’ spread. The glass now appears black when full and together with the white lid replicates a pint of Guinness.

This is a special edition launch with only 300,000 jars being created which means this will be the must have edition to any St Patrick's party.

This unique product has been created using a special recipe with 30% Guinness yeast (a specific strain of yeast used only to make Guinness), giving it a subtle Guinness flavour, without the alcohol.

The limited edition 250g jars of Guinness Marmite (RRSP £2.49) will be on-shelf from 18th February, in time for St. Patrick’s day on the 17th March, for around six weeks. Stockists include Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Morrisons, and Co-op."

If you look at the Marmite Forum you'll see a post and link to Wikipedia's page on Guinness Yeast Extract and suggesting a tie in. Who needs focus groups! All our brands should have this model built into them. A brand that has a forum and a string of wikipedia entries by definition is a brand people are talking about. These aren't consumers they are enthusiasts.

Good example of 2 brands embarking on a tie in that's mutually beneficial for both of their brand molecules. Great timing, great idea and great innovation. They have also got all of their 2.0 bases covered: Flickr, wikipedia backstory, forum seeding etc. Have they used any paid for media?