Sarah Naugle and her two young children were strolling down a Nova Scotia beach Monday when they discovered a message in a bottle.
“I noticed the top of a bottle sticking out of the seaweed, so I picked it up,” Naugle told CTV Atlantic. “I noticed it was a full bottle, and there was a message inside. I couldn’t believe it!”
But instead of finding a note from a castaway on some desert isle, Naugle found promotional material from Ireland’s ‘Guinness Beer Company.’
By today’s environmental standards, the PR stunt probably wouldn’t fly, but in 1959, it must have seemed like marketing gold: send 38 ships into the Atlantic and dump 150,000 Guinness bottles filled with ad copy into the sea.
“Why do doctors recommend Guinness?” one pamphlet asks. “In simple insomnia and nervous strain, Guinness accomplishes marvels.”
“But in any case, do please try a bottle of Guinness stout,” another reads. “I am sure you will appreciate it.”
Nearly 60 years later, the bottles are still being found from as nearby as Wales to as far away as California and South Africa. Some are even for sale on eBay.
Naugle, however, says she has no intention of selling hers.
“(I’ll) probably just put it up on a shelf and admire it and think about the memory of all of us being together yesterday,” she said.
With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisko
