Beer In Ads #2498: If Seven Men Sailed Seven Ships

Friday’s ad is for Guinness, from 1952. While the best known Guinness ads were undoubtedly the ones created by John Gilroy, Guinness had other creative ads throughout the same period and afterward, too, which are often overlooked. This ad, one of many that used Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and is a parody of the poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” which was originally in Through the Looking-Glass. In this parody, the Guinness-themed poem begins “If seven men … sailed seven ships,” and is about some odd looking ships and their captains trying to find Guinness “from China to Peru.”