Beer labels make comeback with summer promos blitz

Two of the city's top beer brands -- Carlsberg and San Miguel -- rarely seen on the recall chart, made it to 12th and 17th place respectively as both labels stepped up promotions and advertising ahead of the summer. However, ParkNShop TV commercials, which use real staff to illustrate how hard working the supermarket is at ensuring its prices are the best in town, were selected by Hong Kong's TV viewers as the most-memorable commercials in July, with a recall rate of 94 per cent. The supermarket chain, the biggest ad spender in the category, forked out about HK$26 million (US$3.3 million) in June, sharply up by about 85 per cent over the previous year, according to local research house admango. Meanwhile, Carlsberg returned to the recall chart after over a year. According to Carlsberg Hong Kong brand manager Chris Tsang, summer is the peak promotional period for beer labels. He added that Carlsberg's multimillion-dollar branding TVC to promote its Skol brand (launched in Hong Kong five years ago) marked the first time television advertising was used to position the low price beer as a market leader in the segment and to encourage beer drinkers to try the product. He said: "In the past, Skol was quite low profile as we only used below-the-line advertising and print ads to promote the brand. However, we would like to do more and allocate more resources to the brand starting from this year in a move to boost the sales." Meanwhile, San Miguel -- last seen on the recall chart in December 2002 -- hit the mark with its $10 million campaign, which communicated its new brand image -- 'Courage to be genuine' -- to consumers 18 and over.