The new ad has been created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, the same agency that was behind 1999's "surfer", which has been voted as the public's favourite ad of all time.
The new work is similarly dramatic but with a completely different feel. It opens with a taxi driving along a remote road in the jungle. Eventually the taxi can go no further and its three young occupants, a woman and two men, have a moment of consternation.
One of them notices a moth and how it is drawn towards the light. Realising that the moths will lead them where they want to go, he gets out of the car and begins to follow, accompanied by his two friends.
A cloud of moths swirls through the jungle eventually leading the trio to a clearing and their desired destination -- a lively bar. It ends with the new strapline "out of darkness comes light", which appears in front of a swirling cloud of Guinness.
Nick Robinson, marketing director of Guinness, said: "'Moth' has all the visual drama and power that you expect to be associated with Guinness and we feel that the ad is a start of a campaign that will mark a new chapter in the heritage of Guinness advertising."
He added: "It was also important for us to spotlight the product again in the advertising. One of the most defining characteristics of Guinness is the 'surge and settle' where out of clouds of turbulence, a perfect creamy white head appears at the top of the pint."
The ad was written by Nick Worthington and art directed by Paul Brazier. It was directed by Walter Stern, who has worked on ads for Adidas and Coca-Cola, as well as creating music videos for Madonna and David Bowie.
Once again, music plays an important role in the ad and the team listened to hundreds of tracks before choosing 'Sing, Sing, Sing', a song originally written in the 1950s but taken from the 1993 film 'Swing Kids'.
Staff at the agency became experts in moth behaviour in the run-up to the shooting of the ad, developing a moth harness so that close-ups could be shot and breeding thousands of moths to star in the film.
In the end, though, it took 6,000 hours working on computer-generated effects at The Mill to finish the ad. The agency assured journalists that no moths were harmed in the making of the film.
The crew also had to construct the jungle bar by building a facade over an abandoned building in the jungle.
The campaign breaks this evening during the Champions League football match on ITV1 but can also be viewed on .
Diageo is spending 拢6.5m on the first three months of the campaign. Another execution with the same strapline will appear in the autumn and both will run until the end of the year. Media planning and buying is through Carat.
Guinness is also being pushed on trade with campaigns backing the brand's sponsorship of the 6 Nations rugby tournament, Cheltenham, and its unofficial sponsorship of St Patrick's Day.
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