CASE STUDY: Building a beer brand in the blogosphere

Background 
The Malaysia beer market is crowded, with an array of seemingly generic brands jostling for attention and share. Tiger needed to remain relevant among its young target audience of 21- to 30-year-olds, strengthen brand positioning and increase loyalty, and ultimately increase share of the market.

Aim
With big-budget marketing efforts by many competitors focused on branding and sponsorships, Tiger needed to cut through to potential consumers by creating a campaign that stood out. With this in mind, Tiger set out to position itself as a unique, cool and contemporary beer that young people would want to associate with.

Execution
A proprietary research tool found that the target audience wanted to be associated with cool and trendy brands and products that offered them a ‘differentiator’ image. Focus groups showed that opinion leaders and social influencers demonstrating these traits served to reinforce the credibility of a brand.

Tiger needed to excite target consumers by injecting an element of surprise through its packaging and presentation. Three different designer bottle sleeves were developed, based on music and artistic themes. The shrink-wrapped bottles featured Tiger’s branding in a stylised manner and stood out from the competition.

The strategy was to position Tiger as a brand enabling consumers to ‘stand out’. The initiative focused on the online social space, with endorsements from key opinion leaders and social influencers, alongside above-the-line advertising and PR. It was executed in four phases.

To begin with, to stand out from the typical green glass bottles, Tiger beer bottles were repackaged with contemporary designs by internationally acclaimed artistes.

With restrictions on advertising alcohol products on TV, online endorsements by key influencers served to promote Tiger to its critical audience. To generate interest around its brand and the repackaged product, Tiger made use of Malaysia’s top blog aggregator, with 55,000 blogs including work by the country’s best-known bloggers, and organised a ‘Stand out’ blogger party. The party was Malaysia’s first by an alcohol brand for bloggers.

Post-campaign publicity was amplified with content distributed across a range of social media platforms. Directly after the party, the media covered the event in the national dailies and ‘Stand out’ bloggers flooded the web with footage of the party on their blogs, Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts. Thousands of party pictures were posted on Flickr and Twitter, while videos were uploaded on YouTube.

Results
According to Synovate, perception of Tiger as 'a beer for good times and fun' increased by 14 per cent; an additional 12 per cent of consumers described the beer as one 'my friends approved of'; and consumption among young adults increased by six per cent.
(Source: Synovate BBT May 09)

Credits
Project: Tiger Beer Limited-Edition Stand Out Campaign
Client: Guinness Anchor Marketing
Product: Tiger Beer
Creative agency: G2 Direct & Interactive Kuala Lumpur, Saatchi & Saatchi Malaysia, Mindshare Malaysia
People:

G2 Direct & Interactive Kuala Lumpur
Samuel Chan, General Manager
David Sin, Group Creative Director
Elaine Chew, Account Director
Gwei Hway, Interactive Account Director
Edmund Wong, Account Manager
Bryan Wong, Digital Manager
Jonathan Lim, Art Director
Darian Goh & Collin Yeoh, Copywriter
Deepan Armugan, Designer
Emily Kok, Designer
Lukman Hussein, Flash Programmer

Saatchi & Saatchi Malaysia
Cheryl Lee, Account Director
April Toh, Account Executive
Karen Wong, Art Director
Ramanjit Singh, Copywriter
James Wong, Deputy CD
Adrian Miller, ECD
Gigi Lee, Head of Design


Mindshare Malaysia
Desmond Kiu, Manager
Audrey Ooi, Assistant Planner
Matthew Pak, The Exchange Executive

Duration: 1 May 2009 to 30 June 2009
Exposure: print, online, activation