Guinness LoVely campaign

Guinness has given its most famous mark a new job: the harp now doubles as the letter “v” in a campaign called LoVely, a tidy way to feel modern without changing the logo.

Delivered by AMV BBDO, the campaign leans on a core insight: the harp’s silhouette already reads like a “v.” The device is used across high-impact out-of-home and digital out-of-home creative, letting the brand stretch a single visual idea through festival activations, sports partnerships and everyday scenes without reworking the symbol itself.

Why it matters

Heritage brands face a familiar problem — update and risk alienating loyal customers, or stay conservative and feel irrelevant to younger drinkers. LoVely charts a middle course by extending an existing asset rather than inventing a new one. The move preserves the bottle and badge people know (the harp has been on Guinness packaging for over 160 years) while giving the typography a fresh, contemporary hook.

"Sometimes the best ideas are right in front of you." — George Hackforth-Jones, global creative director at AMV BBDO

That restraint is central to the campaign’s success. Photographers Dan Burn-Forti and Peter Franklyn Banks shot tightly cropped, lived-in images — muddy wellies at Electric Picnic, an arm around a mate at a football match, a can tucked under a poncho — so the same visual language can sit comfortably beside Guinness’s Electric Picnic presence in County Laois or its Premier League sponsorship.

Context, not redesign

Guinness’s advertising history helps explain why this matters. The brand didn’t advertise at all for the first 170 years of its existence, and when it finally did the brief was simple: ads must be as exceptional as the beer. LoVely also nods to the long-running line "Lovely Day for a Guinness," which originated in the 1930s and was revived last year — a tidy callback that feels like continuity rather than reinvention.

LoVely has launched first in Ireland and Great Britain, with wider roll-out planned for Africa and Asia-Pacific. It’s a small design pivot with big strategic upside: the harp stays sacred, but its context shifts to keep the brand looking current.