Alcohol brand Guinness might have its origins in Ireland, but today its biggest market is in Africa. Academic Jordanna Matlon has just released a paper studying how that came to be and, in particular, examined the role of advertising campaigns going back to late colonial times to understand how the brand was focused on shaping African masculinity. Matlon explains in The Conversation that by the era of African independence from the mid 1950s to the 1970s, Guinness was already a well-known brand with ad campaigns targeting an African audience. “Like colonialism generally, Guinness linked the consumption of foreign goods to the “civilizing mission,” Matlon said. “To be a civilized, modern man, the argument went, was to drink what the colonisers drank.”

How did Guinness capture the African market – what’s the appeal?

We can think about Guinness in Africa in two phases. The first was less marketing savvy than old-fashioned imperial domination, in which territories under British dominion were captive markets for British imports. Despite its proud Irish origins, Guinness has had solid connections to the UK since the 1800s. Following British imperial shipping routes, the brewery began exporting to Africa in 1827. In 1959 Guinness established an import/export arrangement with Britain’s United Africa Company.

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By the era of African independence from the mid-1950s to the 1970s – the second phase – Guinness was already a well-known brand. Its advertising strategies found a ready African audience. Like colonialism generally, Guinness linked the consumption of foreign goods to the “civilising mission”. To be a civilised, modern man, the argument went, was to drink what the colonisers drank. But this was part of a larger work-consume nexus in which modern men were salaried men who could afford such trappings. Women, I should add, were always excluded: colonial ideals expressed clear gender divisions, with men in the public sphere and women at home, cooking for their (supposed) husbands and raising their (supposed) children.

Tailored to African consumers, mid-1900s Guinness ads featured sophisticated African men in suits and ties enjoying their beers – clearly after a long day at the office. But like so many foreign imports, part of the appeal involved adapting to local tastes. It played off ideas of African strength and especially virility as a masculinised strength.

Could you talk us through your analysis of the Michael Power campaign?

This follows directly from my last point. Guinness became well known as a drink that made you strong. From the 1960s on, among its African consumers the brewery made “Guinness gives you power” its rallying cry. This morphed into the fictional character of Michael Power who, at the turn of the century, appeared in film shorts and a feature-length award-winning film, Critical Assignment – all part of Guinness’s advertising campaign.

Power, a globetrotting journalist, was handsome, fearless, impeccably dressed, and generically African. In Michael Power, Guinness was responding directly to the question of how Africa positions itself in a world still strongly shaped by colonial hierarchies. Here was a figure who had turned the page, embodying elegance, wit, cosmopolitanism – and, of course, power.

And the other two campaigns – Guinness Greatness and Made of More?

Despite Michael Power’s success in helping make Guinness Africa’s leading imported beer, the campaigns that followed pivoted sharply. Michael Power was a fictional character who reflected the aspirations more than the reality of most African men.

To come of age in Africa in the 2000s was to have grown up reeling from the effects of structural adjustment. Jobs that offered the best prospects for a middle-class life had overwhelmingly been in the public sector. The conditions attached to debt relief scaled these jobs back significantly. Now the informal economy was on the rise. To increase its target market, Guinness needed to speak to the experiences of real consumers: men who had long abandoned the prospect of a job that would have required a tie and a briefcase.

In the commercial I look at from the Greatness campaign, a football scout comes to Africa (it’s unclear where on the continent exactly) and discovers talent everywhere – even in his driver. Not coincidentally, this was aired around the time of the 2010 men’s football World Cup in South Africa when the dream of football stardom felt especially palpable.

In a Made of More commercial, an actual collective of Congolese dandies known as sapeurs return home from thankless day labour and transform into new men with their stylish – we might say ostentatious! – clothing. The narrator says, “In life, you cannot always choose what you do. But you can choose who you are.” Though not salarymen, they prove their worth.

These campaigns take a major turn from the colonial iteration of the ideal man. Rather, we find the improbable but spectacular success of the international athlete, or the shift away from work altogether and toward conspicuous consumption. Both reflect a new Africa – indeed, a new global order – that has abandoned salaried work for economies of entrepreneurs and consumers.

What do you conclude (and what is ‘bottom billion masculinity’)?

I borrow this idea of the “bottom billion” from the business world, where emerging markets are a final frontier for corporate profits. It is supposed to celebrate the wealth potential of the poorest people on Earth: as the argument goes, the minuscule “wealth” of a billion people is really a fortune.

Of course if we pick this apart just a bit it is clear that the wealth belongs not to the poor but to the corporations that sell them things. There is no real “Africa Rising” in this vision, no plan for enlarging an African middle class. Reflecting a longer colonial legacy, wealth here is something to be extracted.

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Bottom billion masculinity genders this dynamic. It asks us to think about how conspicuous consumption becomes a way for men to showcase their worth, a substitute for the provider role that is out of reach for so many men working precariously in Africa’s informal economies.

Guinness’s recent campaigns celebrate the African everyman, the men at the bottom billion. And in doing so, it sells them a beer. It is a powerful example of how men’s search for validation can actually enrich corporations.