Back to basic - San Miguel

San Miguel kicked off its latest promotional efforts that centered around friendship earlier this year. The campaign's slogan "一支啤酒，一班朋友", if translated directly from Chinese, becomes "A bottle of beer, a bunch of friends". Feels pretty like those "One world, one dream" or "One team, one goal" thing for me...

Anyway, I did not want to comment on the execution or media mix but the idea in this post. Have a feeling the "friendship" idea is too basic for a beer or, more broadly, alcohol brand today. Let me take a wild guess, people has known about the relationship between alcohol and friendship since 2000 years ago, if not earlier. One of the actions the alcohol takes in human body, besides keeping warm, is relaxing mind and tuning down defence, which in turn makes people confess more easily and befriends with strangers more comfortably.

Evolve with your category and differentiate yourself
Because friendship is so basic, it must have been used as a proposition in beer advertising years ago. It feels very much like "convenience" for convenience stores. Convenience is what convenience stores like 7-11 and Circle K brings to people, obviously (That's where they get their names from too). When the category was first invented, when people had no idea about convenience stores, they had to tell people about this selling point of convenience. So we had the great line 梗有一間係左近 from 7-11 fifteen or twenty years ago. Look at what 7-11 sells today. They of course have more shops than before, but they no longer sell their ubiquity.Their proposition evolves into a relationship with customers. This is a great example of a proposition evolving to suit a maturing category.

So what about the beer category? It's a fully matured category with many niche brand capturing different market segments. It does not make much sense to me to use "friendship" in advertising and promotion today because every beer brand has it. Friendship is not a differentiating attribute that can carve out a piece against the competition.

San Miguel the local beer of Hong Kong
What's different about San Miguel compared to other beer brands is its local image. Now that they have re-opened their brewery in Yuen Long, they can legitimately make the "Local" claim. Only god knows why they settled on friendship when they could celebrate their relationship with the city.


All it takes is a twist
Still about the idea, on the how to say this time. Even if San Miguel had settled on this dull "friendship" what to say, shouldn't they sound playful and witty in their advertising with a better how to say? My memories about San Miguel's advertising are those from Stephen Chow and the one that got Hong Kong out of the haunt of SARS (videos below). The style was one key that defined the brand.

Contrary to San Miguel's recent dullness, one similar ad from Jack Daniels I saw months ago on ads of the world a few months ago got the same job nicely done. Built on the same what to say, they infused the how to say with a twist that relates to "Socialism" and a connection with the American Presidential election, the advertisement stands out from the crowd and impressed me very much.

 

Oh, please do not state it so directly with such an Olympic-ish and sport-team-ish line of "A bottle of beer, a bunch of friends". Advertising that is fun to read and true to your brand is not demanding to make. All it takes is a twist in how you say the same thing.



[picture via http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/jack_daniels_tennessee_whiskey_socialist?size=_original
http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/jack_daniels_tennessee_whiskey_democracy?size=_original]

Traditional Chinese Medicine Shampoo - Rejoice crossovers 位元堂

Recently we see Rejoice introducing its new traditional Chinese medicine shampoo, Rejoice 漢方防掉髮系列. The new product boasts its effect on preventing hair loss with its traditional Chinese medicine formula endorsed by local Chinese medicine company 位元堂 (Wai Yuen Tong).
Below are my thoughts on this crossover endorsed product.

Product Quality: Endorsement by 位元堂surely gives confidence about the quality and the effectiveness of the medical formula. One thing they did very well was making clear what medicine ingredients they used. Though the average customer knows exactly how good the product is for preventing hair loss even they know the formula is 生薑, 首烏 and大葉茶, clarity just makes audience feel better. After all, it is human truth that we like to be in control. As compared to 霸王(BaWang), who kept the recipe a secret and people had to guess, it certainly makes a difference.

But a quick search on the web yields opposite, negative results. Since the product is still relatively new, expect to take into account more reviews from the public in the future before drawing any conclusion on the product.

Competition: Obviously, we compare to 霸王 side by side when we consider how this product scores in the market.
霸王 has been the category builder of Chinese medicine shampoo in Hong Kong since it introduced their shampoo several years ago. Rejoice was the quickest to take advantage of the trend of embracing Chinese medicine among shampoo brands, but only comes second to 霸王, when they introduced their人參滋養系列 in 2007. Though Rejoice recognized their deficit and so they targeted different consumer group, they were still viewed as a follower of 霸王 in this relatively new category.
The most probable outcome is a growth in Chinese medicine shampoo category. As a mainstream brand and a non-Chinese brand, Rejoice can attract some users to try Chinese medicine shampoo, particularly those who have been using Rejoice all along.

Positioning: A summary of perceptions towards the two brands.

霸王: Chinese medicine expert, original Chinese medicine shampoo, for middle-aged male, old school, Chinese brand
Rejoice: Not a Chinese medicine expert, not the original Chinese medicine shampoo, for female, modern and to a certain extent fashionable, foreign brand

Consumer Attitude: It is interesting to find that, in spite of the target audience strategy the two brands employed, research on the web shows the young female are also using 霸王 instead of Rejoice. Most likely it is because of Rejoices image of being an amateur in Chinese medicine and not being the original in the category. Teaming up with 位元堂 might help Rejoice successfully capture the market segment of young female which they targeted at the first place.

Timing: Rejoice should have recognized the problem with their own image when they first ventured into their new category two years ago. But trying to fix the problem now is not too late given no other major shampoo brand has made any moves in this category.

Conclusion: I think Rejoice has pressed the right button by teaming up with 位元堂 while still keeping other areas of its image intact. I am quite sure it will fare better than its predecessor, the Rejoice 人參滋養系列, and attract lots of female consumers. (Interestingly, and perhaps ironically too, 人參滋養系列 is still on the market without being endorsed by 位元堂. What does it mean? Did Rejoice make up this Ginseng story themselves and there was no substantiation behind it? Interesting...)

As the category develops, I think it will depart from shampoo and move into traditional Chinese medicine based personal care to include cosmetics and skincare. If it really goes this way, Rejoice will not be able to hold on, as they are only a shampoo. But 霸王 and 位元堂 will. Expect them to collide again in the future in the new arena of Chinese herbal medicine personal care that will worth zillions of dollars.