A Review of Victoria Bitters Advertising Campaign - Report Example

A Review of Victoria Bitter’s “For a Hard Earned Thirst” Advertising Campaign Name Institution Tutor Introduction Every product/service requires advertising so as to stand out from other competing or rival brands. According to Blakeman (2015), nothing is old-fashioned when it comes to the 21st century advertising. Indeed, the most effective advertising campaigns not only approach the target, but also grab their attention by employing uncommon and engaging devices, including mobile advertising and cinema, product placement and guerrilla events, as well as intercept teams, just to mention a few among the many media alternatives available to present-day’s advertiser. Alternatively, often an effective advertisement campaign communicates not only a product’s logo and name, but also its purpose before an indifferent public that sees at least more than a thousand advertisement messages daily. Given this, Blakeman (2015) argues that in order to help burst through the advertising haze, it is imperative for every campaign to adopt not only its unique style, look and even personality, as the overall effect of an effective advertisement campaign is significantly superior to any of its individual components. Generally, a collective effect of the visual and verbal identity used is able to push the essential consumer benefit to the right target, stand out from competition as well as achieve various communication objectives, using the right strategy, within the right media. It is within this background that this paper provides a review of Victoria Bitter’s “For a Hard Earned Thirst” advertising campaign. Background Victoria Bitter (VB) is a large type of beer manufactured by Carlton & United Breweries, an affiliate of Foster’s Group based in Melbourne; Australia.VB has, for a long time, been Australia’s highest selling beer (Atkinson, 2012). In fact, Greenblat (2012) highlights that according to AC Nielsen, an international marketing research firm, VB was said to be Australia’s only billion-dollar selling brand, selling an equivalent of a slab after each second. AC Nielsen also confirms that at one period, VB traded two times as much as any other full strength (undiluted) beer, besides being the only Australian brand that was in the top three sellers within all the Australian states. Victoria Bitter has also been able to maintain its dominance as the beer brand with largest market share of all the brands trading in Australia for over two decades. On the other hand, VB lost this particular position to XXXX Gold during the year 2012.VB actually held a 13.7% volume share in April 2011 with XXXX gold holding an 11.7% volume share. Alternatively, with just a year on, VB plummeted to 12.3%, with XXXX gold taking the lead with 12.4% (Atkinson, 2012).According to Mooney (2012), this drop was attributed to the consumers’ reaction as they felt duped by the company’s decision to alter the beer’s brewing process when they made a number of changes to the beer’s recipe. In reaction to this, the beer company changed the brand’s name back from VB to Victoria Bitter, in addition to reintroducing the old packaging and the tagline “For a hard earned thirst”. Consequently, an advertisement campaign was developed to communicate the changes to both the existing and prospective consumers. Figures 1.0 and 1.1 below show some of the illustrations of advertisement materials used for the “For a Hard Earned Thirst” advertising campaign. Figure 1.0 Figure 1.1 Overview of the Agency Hired To Develop the Advertising Campaign As highlighted by coloribus.com (2015), Carlton & United Breweries hired Clemenger BBDO Melbourne to develop the campaign (the hard earned thirst campaign).The choice of this advertising agency was based on a number of major strengths that the advertising agency has. Firstly, one of its major strength originates from the fact that the agency is one of Australia’s long-established marketing communications or advertising firms, hence holding significant experience in as far as communication marketing in the Australian marketing is concerned. Secondly, the agency is also a major leader within the Australian market, widely esteemed for the quality relating to its creative works, for instance the ground-breaking work on drink wise, which was the most engaging advertising campaign in Australia’s advertising history. The secret behind the agency’s long history with quality is a strong core team within its creative department, who always ensure the firm’s lofty standards are maintained. Other than this, the agency is known to regularly feature among the victors in advertising festivals across the world, a factor that no doubt, attracts a large number of clients to the agency. Overall Communication and Marketing/Business Objectives According to Tabone (2014), the overall communication and marketing/business objectives of the advertising campaign was to reinforce the message that the beer company indeed supports the development of products that have a strong connection with the people, having made a massive mistake by altering the recipes of the beer, and consequently not only witnessing beer lovers revolting in disgust, but also VB’s market share volume plummeting for the first time in more than ten years. Consequently, in attempt to win back loyalty, the company through the advertising campaign reassures the clients of quality by firmly declaring that it is indeed back to “quench a hard earned thirst”. The message from the advertising is as well calming and seeks to cultivate a significantly strong loyalty while at the same time urging prospective and former consumers to reconsider their loyalties. Certainly; the advertisement campaign is a reassertion of VB’s quality as it tries to reattach the brand to its former tradition of meeting tastes as well as preferences of their consumers (Tabone, 2014). Creative Concept/Idea, Execution and Tactics Employed for the Advertising Campaign Employing largely the concept of the hierarchy of effects model, the advertising campaign pushed forward a message that promised its consumers a given desired state. Indeed, the communication persuaded consumers to comprehend the benefits of quenching their thirsts after a hard work, a creative move that also relate with personal values of the targeted consumers of hard work. Employing the use of a convincing tone, the advertisement campaign targeted a market segment of the ages between 24-30 years who have not been entirely brand loyal, but are believed to be easily by their respective environments. The strategy of the advertisement campaign targeted not only being at the front of every consumer’s mind, but also in front of every consumer’s eyes. As such, one could see their advertising material not only on the billboards, but also on bar mats, on buildings as well as on the coasters where customers’ drinks are often served (Tabone, 2014).Certainly, this was part of the company strategy to trigger the needs as well as the wants of consumers into deciding on their products. The company tended to place the advertisements, particularly huge billboard signage alongside the major arterial roads that often receives heavy morning as well as more prominently afternoon traffic. For instance, as it can be seen in figure 1.2 below, the VB visual advertising appears on all kinds of visual promoters. Figure 1.2 Overall, one would, without a doubt, commend the agency for the strong visual imagery that they developed in an effort to not only create a significantly strong connection with product, but also in terms of how they tried to give the VB brand a personality that individuals can respond to. Evaluation and Monitoring (Measures Put in Place to Monitor the Success of the Campaign and the Results or Outcomes Achieved) As Belch and Michael (2012) highlights, advertising is essentially not an accurate science. As such, there is no accurate way by which to determine the effectiveness of an advertisement campaign. For instance, it is not easy to determine how many dollars are generated by every advertising dollar that one spends. Nonetheless, there are various methods that often provide a rough as to whether a firm’s advertisements are actually hitting the mark. Alternatively, as highlighted by the Carlton & United Breweries website (2014), to evaluate the success of its advertising campaign, Carlton & United Breweries put in place a number of measures including: Making a comparison of sales beforehand, during and after the advertisement campaign Tracking the retail traffic by monitoring the flow of sales from its major stores. The monitoring was actually conducted prior to the beginning of the campaign so as to have a basis for comparison Comparing both the pre as well as the post-advertising traffic on the company’s website so as to acquire not only the daily and weekly, but also monthly reports regarding the hits on the company website Using various devoted phone lines in order to trail phone orders According to B&T Magazine (2013), the advertising campaign resulted in a number of positive outcomes. Firstly, the number of sales accrued from Victoria increased by 2 per cent, as a result, putting to a halt a decade of steady 10 per cent sales decline. Secondly, the investment poured on the advertising campaign brought the brand back to its full strength at 4.9 per cent. Alternatively, a multimillion dollar venture or investment on the brand as well as a return to full strength helped cure the brand’s legacy as sales began rising after 10 year period of declining sales. References Atkinson, J. (2012).XXXX Gold knocks VB off its perch.Retrieved from B&T Magazine. (2013).Victoria Bitter Reaps a Sales Boost Following Campaign. The Misfits Media Company Pty Limited Blakeman, R. (2015). Advertising Campaign Design: Just the Essentials. Routledge Belch, G & Michael, B. (2012).Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, Edition 9, illustrated. McGraw-Hill/Irwin coloribus.com. (2015).Victoria Bitter Beer: "For A Hard Earned Thirst, Shirt" TV Commercial by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, EXIT FILMS. Retrieved from Carlton & United Breweries. (2014).Privacy Policy. Retrieved from Greenblat, E. (2012).VB: The Second Best Cold Beer. Retrieved from Mooney, C. (2012).We got VB wrong', says CUB. Retrieved from: Tabone, C. (2014).VB Marketing Blog, Retrieved from: Read More