Swimblack

Swimblack (also written as Swim Black) is a 1998 advertisement for Guinness-brand draught stout which was broadcast in the United Kingdom. It is the first in the Good things come to those who wait advertising campaign created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO who had won the Guinness account from Ogilvy & Mather in January 1998. The centrepiece of the Swimblack campaign is a 60-second television and cinema commercial written by Tom Carty, art directed by Walter Campbell and directed by Jonathan Glazer, which depicted an aging local sports hero's annual swimming race from an offshore buoy to his brother's seafront pub against the "clock" of pint of Guinness being "correctly" poured at the bar. The ad was shot in the remote Italian village of Monopoli and used local villagers for the crowd scenes. The aims of the campaign were to promote Guinness in general, to turn around the negative consumer opinion of the length of time required to correctly pour a pint of Guinness from the tap, usually quoted as 119.5 seconds, and to encourage bartenders to take the time to do so.