Compare a product(beer) in two different brand Essay

Introduction In order to understand the purpose and significance of the integrated communication process, it is useful to compare to brand within the same product category. This report seeks to provide an understanding of the effectiveness on campaign strategies. In doing so, a critique of the contrasting creative strategy and communication objectives will be attained. An insight on target market and market partitioning approach comes into the scope of this report. Product Category The product category chosen is food/drink product, especially on beer product. The following two brands are both from foreign market, with high reputation in Asian and Europe respectively. Our Tiger Beer campaign was â€Å"Discover the tiger† sourced from The Face (February 2003) (See Appendix A). The competing brand for comparison will be the â€Å"Reassuringly Expensive† campaign from Stella Artois done by BBDO, which was an award-winning ad on several advertising ceremony. (See Appendix B) Communication Objectives Since Tiger Beer is unfamiliar to Western market, the objective here mainly focuses on brand awareness to the target customer. Encouraging consumers who have never try our brand to try it by using a creative headline. In this sense, our brand is informing target customers the existence of our brand, try to penetrate into the Western market. We aimed to change the target market’s image of Asian brand and move consumers through to purchase. In fact, Asian beer brand are rarely advertised on Western countries magazines, Tiger Beer wish to differentiate itself from other foreign competitors through the message â€Å"Discover the tiger†. Which achieve a high awareness by leaving a question mark to most of the reader. The communication objectives for Stella Artois include brand attitude and brand recognition. As this beer has been on the market for a long time, advertising has moved from brand awareness to brand recognition, it wants consumers to associate the brand with their lifestyle. Stella Artois’s objective is to ensure its premium beer position in the market by matching the good quality beer with â€Å"well quality people†. Since they well understand their target market’s need, the campaign theme is to form a positive attitude towards the brand. As you can see in the ad, the communication message is aim directly to a specific group and the idea is outstanding amount competitors. In more situation, potential buyers become aware of more than one brand in a given product category (Rossiter 1997). Therefore, Stella Artois has used an effective visual message on this campaign to evoke viewers ’emotion and increase the percentage of consumers in the target market who associate specific features or lifestyle with their brand. Target market Based on the communication objective, it is clear that two advertisements have distinctly different target markets. From the Tiger Beer advertisement, we can infer that the target market is comprised of young male between the ages of 18-25, due to the fact that the advertisement was advertised in The Face. This magazine has a readership comprised predominantly of young male between this age group. This group of people may have already heard of Tiger Beer, and are looking for more confirmation from reference group. They are likely to try new thing, social connections and quality of the beer are important factors in the decision-making process. In a certain extent, this group is favourable brand switchers. Their awareness may change over time and causes less-frequent purchase of our brand, unless we can provide a moderately favourable attitude towards the brand (Rossiter 1997). While Stella Artois was aimed at brand recognition, they have an established customer basis, which can be described as brand loyal (Rossiter 1997). They  have strong favourable attitude toward our brand, they look forward to purchasing a premium lager, which delivers quality and satisfaction. Stella Artois is simply about quality, not price; drinkers will pay a premium price for Stella Artois due to its commitment to quality. Certainly, Stella Artois is affordable to them as they are in middle or high-income group. From the above, the following table summarises and contrasts the target markets characteristics. Tiger Beer Stella Artois Age 18-25 25 or above Social status Middle income classAsian backgrounds Higher incomeHigher education level Purchase behaviour Brand switching Brand loyalty Lifestyle Young irreverentSocial activities Quality lifestyleStyle society Factors influenceDecision-making Reference groupFinancial statusCulture/social class SituationEmotionPast decision Market Positioning It is obvious that both company have differentiated their brands from others in the minds of the target market. It would be significant, as a link needs to be established between the brand benefits and the target consumer to create a positive brand image in relation to competing brands. Both of the ads have positioning strategies that focus on the consumer rather than the competitor. Ø Repositioning Tiger Beer adopts this strategy due to the recent acceptance by Western  countries and targeting it to a new market segment. Since they have previously built up a good reputation in Asian countries with value, quality and taste. Tiger Beer has chosen to direct it’s advertising to younger who prefer adventure. Moreover, it was positioned itself as a mystery Asian flavour instead of sportive and excitement image with their sport sponsorship campaign. (Belch & Belch 2001) Ø Positioning by product attributes and image Stella Artois is positioned on the basis of particular characteristics that differentiate it from its competitors. The slogan â€Å"Reassuringly Expensive† has been used since the 80’s. The key benefit stressed here is the quality, prestige image and value, which is the basic category need for a premium beer. Such elements are usually started at the top of the partitions; Stella Artois was well planned for it’s customers to evaluate these elements in their decision-making process. Creative Strategies & Tactics This involves several elements to bring out the central message for the advertiser to achieve their desire outcome. The stronger the idea, the more effective the ad can communicate to consumers. As both of the companies have adjusted the communication objective to fit for target market, we can see that both companies have effective use their budget to shift away from traditional beer advertising. Ø Advertising Appeals Both of the ads are using an emotional appear as a basis. For the Tiger Beer, we see an Asian woman in the centre of the picture. The woman looks straight at the reader of the ad and holding a small kerosene lamp, burning. Next to her is a rickshaw with a bottle of Tiger Beer in the seat. The street was extremely dark and silent with some Chinese glim at the end of the street. The advertisement tries to attract the reader with the notion of the mystical and strange. (See appendix A) Stella Artois uses a remainder advertising approach on their latest campaign. The campaign background is luxurious, elegant furniture such as a designer chair or a piano, which is being damaged with an opened cap putting on it. The ad appears to be simple but hard to understand, unless viewers of the ad have some ideas on the brand. For the target market point of view, it was highly associated with the Stella Artois brand image. And leave a strong curiosity to the viewer. (See appendix B) Ø Headlines and Visual elements The Tiger Beer using a question in Chinese at the top right hand corner to enhance the Asian feeling. The meaning of that heading is: â€Å"Do you have gut?† Which implies that Tiger Beer is an Asian mystery to western countries, try this beer if you are brave enough. It hopes to generate an answer of â€Å"Yes, I do, I will try the beer.† Secondly, there is a sub-heading at the bottom of the ad: â€Å"Discover the tiger†. So what is the connotation of this advertisement? Firstly, it tells the reader that when he or she drinks this beer, they will â€Å"discover the tiger†. There are several connotative meanings represented in it. It depends on the view the reader takes. For example, we can assume that the woman represents the tiger. She is the one to appear strong, to control the situation. The black hair and black lipstick and dark eyes give her a mystical and dangerous appearance. Moreover, the content of appeal are of sexual nature, which is effective in gauging the attention of its target market. Stella Artois continues to use the â€Å"Reassuringly Expensive† as sub-heading at the bottom of the ad. The wording is small as for the conclusion after reading the visual elements. Which encourage the target customer to believe that Stella Artois is a good quality beer, it is worthwhile to open up the bottle on the edge of the furniture immediately without looking for the bottle opener. This slogan can build up a resonance with the target audience and has adopted across all of its advertising to reinforce the perception that this is a premium beer. The overall picture was simple and clear, nothing else. It would be enough to convey a sense of premium quality. (Paul  Messaris 1997) Ø Advertising Media Both advertisements were found in fashion magazines. As magazines have narrow exposure levels, niche magazine such as The Face and I-D have directly targeted to the intended audience. Generally, an effective communication campaign relies on budget. Tiger Beer has trade-off between reach and frequency. In this case, what Tiger Beer doing is reaching a few people a lot of times. Tiger Beer has used several advertising appeal and spent the same budget in only one media, such as magazine; therefore, a much smaller number of people will be exposed to the advertising, but they will be exposed very frequently. In contrast, Stella Artois scattering their budget across a number of different media. According to a research in UK, it allocates the largest slice of spent on TV commercial, followed by magazine and billboard. The reason is that Stella Artois use other communication channels such as magazine to make to campaign stronger and gives the overall communicate program a greater synergy. (AdNews 28/2) Bibliography 1. Rossiter, John & Larry Percy, Advertising, Communications & Promotions Management, 1997, McGraw-Hill. 2. George E. Belch & Micheal A. Belch, Advertising and Promotion, An Integrated Marketing Communication Perspective, 2001, Fifth edition, McGraw-Hill. 3. Paul Messaris, Visual Persuasion, The role of image in advertising. 1997, Sage Publications. 4. AdNews 28 February 2003 5. Asia Pacific Breweries LTD (Annual Report 2001) http://www.apb.com.sg/report/01-brews.html 6. Tiger Beer Corporation www.tigerbeer.com/main 7. Stella Artois Homepage www.stellaartois.co.uk