The agency snatched the US$4 million business for San Miguel Pale Pilsner and San Miguel Light in Hong Kong and China without a pitch from incumbent for the past three years, Ogilvy & Mather.
McCann also controls the creative brief in the Philippines - the beer label's biggest market - where the agency has worked on the $22 million business for more than 20 years with San Miguel Corporation. The marketing manager for the Hong Kong subsidiary, Frederick Chan, said: "(The shift) is due to an agency realignment exercise for San Miguel corporation and subsidiary."
McCann Erickson Guangming's MD, Mike Wong, who worked on San Miguel at J. Walter Thompson and more recently at Ogilvy, said: "San Miguel had a desire to become more regional with initiatives and to be in a stronger position to compete in new markets like China." McCann Hong Kong first won San Miguel in 1987, but lost it five years later to JWT, which held the brief for a decade before Ogilvy took over in 2001 soon after Wong's appointment.
McCann will need to address several marketing issues facing San Miguel, not least to dispel perception that the brand has become dated.
While San Miguel commands a significant share of the Hong Kong market, it is facing fierce competition from imported beer brands including Heineken and Carlsberg as well as China's Tsing Tao. Ogilvy last month rolled out a multimillion-dollar campaign to address these marketing issues and to rejuvenate its image after Sars hit the beer industry hard in 2003.
Grace Yu, business director at McCann, said: "The challenge is more a category growth issue in the fragmented and highly competitive market. San Miguel, being a market leader, needs to do the category job. Obviously, rejuvenation to capture young adults is a key task."