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… But a Short Time to Live
- By Ikem Okuhu
- Published Monday 15th 2010
- BrandWorld
- Unrated
Guinness Extra Smooth, an extension of Guinness Stout, is at the brinks; and research says it might go the way of the likes of Gulder Max, said to have been trounced by competition. IKEM OKUHU examines the rough road GulderMax travelled and the fate likely awaiting Extra Smooth
GULDER Max was born in September 2006. It died less than a year later but it took Nigerian Breweries a couple of years to release the post mortem on the dead infant whose birth should have been avoided in the first.
But the death of Gulder Max might just not be the last case of infant mortality in the Nigerian breweries market. At the moment, another one that has been hanging on for some three to four years is showing serious signs of joining the ancestors and although it was given “Extra Smooth” as a middle name, life may not be as smooth as would engender long life for Guinness Extra Smooth.
Consumer research conducted at selected outlets around Lagos in the past couple of weeks indicate that demand for this brand has been on the nose-dive with a worrisome result suggesting that the brand might have even dropped behind Legend Extra Stout recently relaunched by Nigerian Breweries. While Nigeria’s premier stout brand, Guinness Stout sits pretty at 82 percent, followed by Legend which has 11.5 percent, Guinness Extra Smooth was able to record only six percent market share. The rear position, of course belongs to a pretender called Turbo King, which essentially is a hybrid of the stout and beer brand.
Results from the survey indicate that most of the consumers who have gravitated to the Legend brand were actually former Extra Smooth drinkers who have apparently been enthralled by the recently unveiled “Real Deal” campaign launched to drive the hitherto struggling NB Plc brand.
Gilder Max and Guinness Extra Smooth are guilty of the same offence – line extension or what other people would describe as brand stretching, an easy way-out approach to marketing where those who are either too lazy to think properly or simply out to mismanage marketing budgets awe management with impressive PowerPoint presentations that deliver nothing but rhetoric and product failures at the end of the day.
Those who introduced line extension to marketing had reasoned that successful brand names are easy ways of attacking a different market segment since this would not necessitate brand engineering. This means that brand names can be extended to new market demographics for ease of penetration and reduce marketing, especially, promotional costs as distributors may perceive there is less risk with a new product if it carries a familiar brand name.
Customers, they also reasoned will associate the quality of the established brand name with the new product and will be more likely to trust the new product. The new product will also attract quicker customer awareness and willingness to trial or sample the product
While the debate on the long term efficacy of brand/line extension is still unresolved, what the people at Nigerian Breweries and Guinness Nigeria Plc did with the brands the needlessly raises strong questions as to the competence of those that design marketing strategies in for some fur biggest brands.
At the time Nigeria Breweries was launching Gulder Max, there was so much promise of a brand that was purpose “built for the strong.” As a matter of fact, the then marketing director of Nigerian Breweries Plc, Mr. Wouter Fijnaut, while introducing the new drink, had explained the brand was a result of a series research that “showed that consumers wanted a beer that would give them maximum satisfaction; a beer with a unique bitter taste, and a beer that would be strong enough to meet the taste of the modern man.”
“We were able to come up with the ingredients and formula that make Gulder Max strong, dark, and with a unique taste. Nigerians ain’t seen nothing yet,” he had boasted, promising that in the coming months, beer consumers would come to appreciate the unique benefits that Gulder Max offers.
But Mr. Fijnaut was nowhere around to tell what happened to those consumers he had surveyed and who said they wanted such a strong, dark beer. He was also nowhere to defend the hundreds of millions of naira spend on the Gulder Ultimate Search of that year that was used to herald the coming of this still-born.
I can read the minds of the “experts” at Nigerian breweries at the time. During that period, Legend Stout was performing woefully against Guinness’ Stout brand. When it appeared obvious that spending money promoting Legend was going to be futile, someone must have had a brainwave for the successful Gulder brand to be extended into a new category that would attract stout drinkers. Remember the TVCs hailing the “strong, dark, high gravity brew”? Was this not an indirect attack on Guinness, which, from the time South African model, Michael Power was the brand icon, has strongly associated power with being black to raise the profile of the brand?
Michael Power, you might recall, was used to sell Guinness Stout as a drink made for the strong and adventurous and, being black in complexion, traded into Guinness colour. This also had the benefit of raising “black” the skin colour of most African to a new high in the realm of adventure.
And so Gulder Max was conceived to replace Legend in the fruitless fight with Guinness. But did this work? The death of the brand after only a couple of unprofitable years in the market is good enough evidence. Gulder Max could not be a stout and was at the early days, attracting only a fraction of Gulder drinkers who after the initial tries reverted their good old Gulder.
If Nigerian Breweries could be forgiven for thinking that Gulder Max could fight Guinness stout, it would be Herculean to fathom what on earth Guinness was thinking when it launched Extra Smooth. Guinness Extra Stout was a virtual monopoly in the market.
A stout drinker remains a stout drinker. There was therefore no reason to for a spin-off in a market where the brand had near 100 percent control. What Guinness said with Extra Smooth was the exact opposite of what Gulder said with Gulder Max – that Guinness Stout was not smooth enough and therefore needed a variant that would be smooth enough for drinkers.
Millions were spent creating commercials including the one with successful hip hop act Tu Face Idibia whose smooth face and “cool” vocals was meant to make Extra Smooth a success. Yes, it did. But the problem was that those who started drinking Extra Smooth were actually Guinness Stout customers who in any case, might have started switching to competition, Legend Extra Stout.
With all these sorry examples would the market see the end similar futile efforts at brand/line extensions? I doubt. People will always explore the easy ways out which usually shrivels in the long term.
GULDER Max was born in September 2006. It died less than a year later but it took Nigerian Breweries a couple of years to release the post mortem on the dead infant whose birth should have been avoided in the first.
But the death of Gulder Max might just not be the last case of infant mortality in the Nigerian breweries market. At the moment, another one that has been hanging on for some three to four years is showing serious signs of joining the ancestors and although it was given “Extra Smooth” as a middle name, life may not be as smooth as would engender long life for Guinness Extra Smooth.
Consumer research conducted at selected outlets around Lagos in the past couple of weeks indicate that demand for this brand has been on the nose-dive with a worrisome result suggesting that the brand might have even dropped behind Legend Extra Stout recently relaunched by Nigerian Breweries. While Nigeria’s premier stout brand, Guinness Stout sits pretty at 82 percent, followed by Legend which has 11.5 percent, Guinness Extra Smooth was able to record only six percent market share. The rear position, of course belongs to a pretender called Turbo King, which essentially is a hybrid of the stout and beer brand.
Results from the survey indicate that most of the consumers who have gravitated to the Legend brand were actually former Extra Smooth drinkers who have apparently been enthralled by the recently unveiled “Real Deal” campaign launched to drive the hitherto struggling NB Plc brand.
Gilder Max and Guinness Extra Smooth are guilty of the same offence – line extension or what other people would describe as brand stretching, an easy way-out approach to marketing where those who are either too lazy to think properly or simply out to mismanage marketing budgets awe management with impressive PowerPoint presentations that deliver nothing but rhetoric and product failures at the end of the day.
Those who introduced line extension to marketing had reasoned that successful brand names are easy ways of attacking a different market segment since this would not necessitate brand engineering. This means that brand names can be extended to new market demographics for ease of penetration and reduce marketing, especially, promotional costs as distributors may perceive there is less risk with a new product if it carries a familiar brand name.
Customers, they also reasoned will associate the quality of the established brand name with the new product and will be more likely to trust the new product. The new product will also attract quicker customer awareness and willingness to trial or sample the product
While the debate on the long term efficacy of brand/line extension is still unresolved, what the people at Nigerian Breweries and Guinness Nigeria Plc did with the brands the needlessly raises strong questions as to the competence of those that design marketing strategies in for some fur biggest brands.
At the time Nigeria Breweries was launching Gulder Max, there was so much promise of a brand that was purpose “built for the strong.” As a matter of fact, the then marketing director of Nigerian Breweries Plc, Mr. Wouter Fijnaut, while introducing the new drink, had explained the brand was a result of a series research that “showed that consumers wanted a beer that would give them maximum satisfaction; a beer with a unique bitter taste, and a beer that would be strong enough to meet the taste of the modern man.”
“We were able to come up with the ingredients and formula that make Gulder Max strong, dark, and with a unique taste. Nigerians ain’t seen nothing yet,” he had boasted, promising that in the coming months, beer consumers would come to appreciate the unique benefits that Gulder Max offers.
But Mr. Fijnaut was nowhere around to tell what happened to those consumers he had surveyed and who said they wanted such a strong, dark beer. He was also nowhere to defend the hundreds of millions of naira spend on the Gulder Ultimate Search of that year that was used to herald the coming of this still-born.
I can read the minds of the “experts” at Nigerian breweries at the time. During that period, Legend Stout was performing woefully against Guinness’ Stout brand. When it appeared obvious that spending money promoting Legend was going to be futile, someone must have had a brainwave for the successful Gulder brand to be extended into a new category that would attract stout drinkers. Remember the TVCs hailing the “strong, dark, high gravity brew”? Was this not an indirect attack on Guinness, which, from the time South African model, Michael Power was the brand icon, has strongly associated power with being black to raise the profile of the brand?
Michael Power, you might recall, was used to sell Guinness Stout as a drink made for the strong and adventurous and, being black in complexion, traded into Guinness colour. This also had the benefit of raising “black” the skin colour of most African to a new high in the realm of adventure.
And so Gulder Max was conceived to replace Legend in the fruitless fight with Guinness. But did this work? The death of the brand after only a couple of unprofitable years in the market is good enough evidence. Gulder Max could not be a stout and was at the early days, attracting only a fraction of Gulder drinkers who after the initial tries reverted their good old Gulder.
If Nigerian Breweries could be forgiven for thinking that Gulder Max could fight Guinness stout, it would be Herculean to fathom what on earth Guinness was thinking when it launched Extra Smooth. Guinness Extra Stout was a virtual monopoly in the market.
A stout drinker remains a stout drinker. There was therefore no reason to for a spin-off in a market where the brand had near 100 percent control. What Guinness said with Extra Smooth was the exact opposite of what Gulder said with Gulder Max – that Guinness Stout was not smooth enough and therefore needed a variant that would be smooth enough for drinkers.
Millions were spent creating commercials including the one with successful hip hop act Tu Face Idibia whose smooth face and “cool” vocals was meant to make Extra Smooth a success. Yes, it did. But the problem was that those who started drinking Extra Smooth were actually Guinness Stout customers who in any case, might have started switching to competition, Legend Extra Stout.
With all these sorry examples would the market see the end similar futile efforts at brand/line extensions? I doubt. People will always explore the easy ways out which usually shrivels in the long term.
