0 Comments Beer in supply for Fiji vs Springboks

I was just reading in the Saturday Weekend Argus that South African Breweries are saying that there is no shortage of beer for the weekend. Obviously this is in light of the fact that South Africa are going to hammer Fiji in the Rugby World Cup quarter final today, the 7th of October. Yeah!
It is a well known fact that in South Africa everyone drinks copious amounts of beer during any rugby game. Red meat is also high on the agenda during rugby. Personally I don’t drink a lot of beer, I might have one or two from time to time, but my preferred choice of drink is Absolut vodka. It fits in well with the lifestyle I live. The bottle is clean looking, simple and it is recognised the world over. Absolut excess.

In the Weekend Argus article, South African Breweries said that some pack sizes were “under pressure” but there was no “critical shortage” of beer. It’s quite interesting to note sales trends like this, and how some of the beer pack sizes come under pressure due to a rugby game. You can’t buy advertising like that. Rugby drives sales like that!

This reminds me of an issue I wrote on a while back on Hansa Marzen Gold beer on another site. For a while Amstel beer was in short supply in South Africa, and Hansa beer then launched their Marzen Gold variety, which was obviously in direct competition to the Amstel brand. The Marzen Gold look was similiar, with the foil covering the cap and a green bottle. While the Hansa were adamant that it was not supposed to be similiar to Amstel, I think we all know it was. Funny enough, the more Hansa tried to deny that it was like Amstel, the more people would liken it to Amstel. Even while drinking Hansa, people were still debating the issue of whether Hansa were trying to copy the look of the Amstel bottle. So even though you were drinking Hansa, you were talking about Amstel.

I distinctly remember a Hansa Marzen Gold promotion taking place at Tiger Tiger night club in Cape Town, where someone asked the promotion girls if the Marzen Gold was the new Amstel. The promotion girls were not allowed to say anything about Amstel, no matter how hard we tried to make them! Obviously Hansa were trying hard to not be compared to Amstel. It was strange, because while Amstel were gone, people spoke about the beer more than ever. It was on everyones minds.

Then there was their clever advertising campaign, which kept on reminding us that Amstel would soon be available again. At the time of the shortage, Hansa Marzen Gold definitely had the visual presence in bars, but Amstel had the presence in the newspapers. There were adverts which would read along the lines of this “After reading this advert you will be 15 seconds closer to your next Amstel” I forget the exact words in the adverts, but they all followed the theme of being a certain amount of time closer to your next Amstel.

I commented that this was clever advertising, because Amstel were keeping their beer fresh in our minds by advertising constantly, often in the weekend newspapers. So while people were relaxing on the weekends, probably thinking about having a beer, Amstel were constantly there in front of them.

I thought this was quite clever and Mike Pearson of FoxP2 advertising agency (Finweek’s New Agency of 2007) noted the following at the time in response to the Amstel adverts:

“Clever chaps, Ogilvy advertising agency.When you’re in a bar you’re thinking about beer anyway, so why not nab people when they aren’t usually thinking about beer, get on top of their minds! When you’re in a bar you’re being assailed by twenty different beer messages…In the newspaper. One. Amstel”

So it would be interesting to see what sort of a market share Hansa took from Amstel after Amstel was out of the game for a little while. Then we could possibly see the effect that the Amstel marketing campaign had and how effective it was.

Sean Lloyd

Editor