LONDON – March 17, 2025 – An ad campaign featuring a group of men who rejected gang life in favour of running an urban ranch in LA tops a chart of the most emotionally engaging Guinness ads.
“Compton Cowboys” leads a list compiled by creative effectiveness platform DAIVID after generating the most intense positive emotions of any ad tested from the famous alcohol brand. To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, the AI platform – which helps marketers by predicting the effectiveness of their creative at scale – used its advanced testing technology to identify the Guinness campaigns that attracted the most positive engagement from viewers.
Built by combining facial coding, eye tracking and survey data with computer vision and computer listening APIs, DAIVID’s AI models let users know within seconds the emotional and business impact of their video or display ad without the need for audience panels. Clients include Nike, Snapchat and EssenceMediacom.
Guinness’ 2018 campaign “Compton Cowboys” took the No.1 spot in DAIVID’s Guinness Ads Chart after it was predicted that 53% of viewers would feel an intense positive response to the ad. That put it just ahead of “Wheelchair Basketball”, an inspiring 2013 ad that generated intense positive feelings from 52.5% of viewers, and “Shane”, which tells the story of how former Welsh rugby player Shane Williams defied the odds to become an international sports star, in second and third respectively.
“Toucans” and “Don’t Jinx It” make up the rest of the top 5. Other ads to appear in the top 10 include iconic Guinness commercials “SwimBlack” (6th), “Surfer” (8th) and ”Round Up Your Mates This St. Patrick’s Day” (10th). Famous campaigns from the alcohol brand to just miss out include “To Arthur”, “Ad Anticipation”, “NoitulovE” and “Sapeurs”.
Top 10 Most Emotionally Engaging Guinness ads
| RANK | CAMPAIGN | % of people who had intense positive emotional responses |
| 1. | “Compton Cowboys” | 53.0% |
| 2. | “Wheelchair Basketball” | 52.5% |
| 3. | “Shane” | 50.3% |
| 4. | “Toucans” | 49.5% |
| 5. | “Don’t Jinx It” | 49.4% |
| 6. | “SwimBlack” | 49.3% |
| 7. | “Quarrel” | 49.2% |
| 8. | “Surfer” | 49.1% |
| 9. | “Clock” | 49.0% |
| 10. | “Round Up Your Mates This St. Patrick’s Day” | 48.8% |
Ian Forrester, CEO and founder of creative effectiveness platform DAIVID, said: “If you have 10 minutes to spare this St. Patrick’s Day, I definitely recommend spending some time watching the ads on DAIVID’s Guinness Top 10. Guinness has consistently delivered memorable, positive and inspiring ad campaigns over many years, and our stats certainly back that up.
“‘Compton Cowboys’ typifies this, generating intense positivity from more than half of the people who watched it. The ad generated intense feelings of empathetic pain among viewers, scoring over four times the average, and also incredibly strong feelings of hope (165% higher than norm) and admiration (+91.2%).”