BEER GAO

TitleBEER GAO
BrandASIA PACIFIC BREWERIES SINGAPORE
Product / ServiceGUINNESS
CategoryC01. Fast Moving Consumer Goods
EntrantBBDO SINGAPORE Singapore, SINGAPORE
Entrant Company BBDO SINGAPORE Singapore, SINGAPORE
Advertising Agency BBDO SINGAPORE Singapore, SINGAPORE
Media Agency STARCOM MEDIAVEST GROUP Singapore, SINGAPORE

Credits

Name Company Position
Ronald Ng BBDO Singapore Chief Creative Officer
Primus Nair BBDO Singapore Executive Creative Director
Gary Lim BBDO Singapore Art Director
Jing Qiu BBDO Singapore Art Director
Nikhil Panjwani BBDO Singapore Copywriter
Joe Braithwaite BBDO Singapore General Manager
Fiona Huang BBDO Singapore Account Director
Adeline Kwek BBDO Singapore Account Director
Mindy Yap BBDO Singapore Planning Director
Ann May Chua BBDO Singapore Agency Producer

Brief Explanation

Guinness is the #1 stout in Singapore, with 70% of its on-trade volumes in traditional coffee shops and hawker centres. But its share has been declining for the past 43 years. In a channel where group drinking is the norm, lager beer is the common choice: an easy-to-drink option that pleases the whole group. Guinness is the complete opposite. Many lager drinkers have tried Guinness, but reject it for its bitterness and polarizing nature. Rather than asking them to replace their lager beer with Guinness immediately, we eased them into its bold flavour instead, by getting them to add Guinness to their lager for a richer-flavoured beer. Given the context of our problem, we needed to get to the heart of it by going on-ground to solve our challenge.

The Brief

Get Guinness into the group drinking occasion among lager beer drinkers, at traditional on-premise outlets – without changing product or price. The big idea? GUINNESS ADDS FLAVOUR TO YOUR BEER. For lager drinkers to accept Guinness, we needed them to appreciate its unique bold flavour–which required mentoring and getting used to. Instead of asking drinking groups to replace their lager with Guinness immediately, we eased them into Guinness’ bold flavour instead – by getting them to add Guinness to their lager, for a more flavourful beer. For the group, sharing a Guinness amongst them meant adding flavour to everybody’s beer.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

In outlets where Beer Găo was activated, we sold an average of over 3 days’ stock in 1 hour. Over the 3-month campaign period, we had a conversion rate of over 55% − a dramatic improvement for a brand outrightly rejected by many lager drinkers in the past. Most importantly, Beer Găo achieved a total sales uplift of 28% during the campaign period vs. average monthly sales in these outlets, and a 40% sales increase at outlets activated in December, the highest it has been over the past 3 years. (Source: Client Data). Given the success of this pilot, Beer Găo has been re-launched in April 2015 with larger scale and reach, to spread the mixing ritual nationwide. The long-term goal is to invite lager drinkers to make their beer Găo (by putting the term at the heart of their bar call language) and eventually graduate to enjoying Guinness fully.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

To bring the idea to life, we gave this mixing ritual an interesting bar-call: Beer Găo. Găo was a local colloquial slang used in traditional on-premise outlets to order anything full-flavoured. Coffee. Tea. Even soup. For the first time, it would be used to order a full-flavoured beer. We activated Beer Găo in a pilot campaign of 115 outlets – deploying twin Promoter Girls (one Guinness, one lager) to invite lager drinkers to make their beer Găo with Guinness and initiate the first pour. We also had a suite of interruptive POS to encourage bar-call, as well as beer mug marker stickers to indicate how flavourful they wanted their beer to be. This encouraged re-trial as lager drinkers experimented with different amounts of Guinness to achieve their ideal flavour intensity.