Guinness beer has launched a blog. Probably it's not a big, big news, but it's definitely worth some space, especially for the interesting discussion it has generated on Gapinvoid last week.

The good thing about the blog is that it's written directly by the Guinness marketing people. No agency involved. The bad thing is that to access the content we need to live in the UK or, at least, this is what you have to declare when you try to access the site. "Blogs" are free content by definition: free in the sense that you don't have to pay to read them, and free in the sense that they're open to everybody. Unfortunately the Guinness blog keeps a lot of readers out. Complying with the "orders" of the legal department it's important (vital?) but then what's the reason of opening a blog if the access needs to be so limited?

Dear martina,
i checked the guiness blog.
it is totally written by the guiness GUYS.
As you can see, someone that writes independently a blog, can give access to anyone to it.
but, when a company or a brand is involved, they are afraid of legal issues, so they limit it to some countries.
And , as i am living in France, i couldnt have access to it directly.
So, this aint a good viral thingy.
and i dont understand why they did it.

Posted by: Jean at February 22, 2006 04:24 PM

Precisely, Martina. For instance, the laws governing drinking are fairly similar in Commonwealth countries; indeed, any nation with a common law tradition. I find it hard to believe that Guinness couldn’t have its legal department check out more territories where its product is sold and include them for the blog.

Posted by: Jack Yan at February 25, 2006 12:30 PM

Russell (from the Guinness blog) here - Thanks for your thoughts folks, we're just starting out so it's great to get feedback so quick. We decided to go ahead (even with the geographic restrictions) because we were really keen to interact with the millions of Guinness fans in GB. I'd love to make the content more widely available but if we tried to get all our stuff OKed by numerous countries then things would just grind to a halt .. so we thought better something than nothing.

Posted by: Russ at February 27, 2006 02:06 PM

spare a thought for the red tape these guys have to go through. for every cool keen bean who wants to check out the blog, there are three who want to take it down because it is alcohol. great that you want to see it, understand your frustration but give these guys a break.

Posted by: danielle at March 2, 2006 11:35 PM

Hi, I think that a reason why the access be limited accordng to countries might be a legal one. In France for instance, the Evin law prohibits many mays of advertising for alcoohol brands. Russel, am I right ?

Posted by: flo at March 4, 2006 09:35 PM

Spot on Flo, there are many countries where alcohol ads are banned. Equally there are many countries where the rules are subtly different to GB so like I say, getting things OKed for multiple countries would just grind our blog to a stop ;-(

Posted by: Russ at March 6, 2006 01:31 PM