Surfing with Guinness on St. Patrick's Day

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a look back at one of the great Guinness commercials of all time: 1999’s “Surfer” from AMV BBDO in London. In crafting the spot, art director Walter Campbell and copywriter Tom Carty were inspired by Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and, especially, by Walter Crane’s 1893 painting Neptune’s Horses, which shows ghostly white horses galloping atop a crashing surf. In a phone interview years ago, Campbell told me, “We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could bring that [painting] to life.’