The everyday hustle can sometimes feel tedious and unrewarding. In the African continent, which is known for its hustle culture, the alcohol consumer is starved of messages that validates their progress journey. Especially within a category where premium and aspiration is marked using materialistic measures of success. Therefore, as a brand that’s said to be old fashioned, Amstel needed to talk about progress in a way that didn’t translate as an old uncle saying, things take time, especially to a consumer seeking instant success.

Amstel has seen a decline in sales and meaningful difference among males aged 25-34years old. Brand research indicates that this consumer found Amstel to represent an old-fashioned uncle’s beer. Over the years Amstel used popular music as a resonance property in the hope that it would keep the brand relevant. However, this strategy created a doppelganger version of Amstel, where Amstel become a symbol of music to the youth and not a beer to be seen drinking. Thus, Amstel needed a ground-breaking brand refresh, that expresses its USP “Slow brewed, Extra Matured’ in a way that not only described the beer brewing process, but that encourages the 25-34year old consumer to trial the beer.

Brief

• Reposition Amstel to drive aspirational appeal and meaning for the 25-34 year old year consumer.

Objectives

• Increase sales among consumers age 25-34 years old by driving meaningful difference and relevance.

We live in a society where a man’s self-worth is equated to his ability to financially provide. The beer category capitalizes on this societal norm as it exploits the need for instant success through the premium cues it uses, positioning alcohol as a symbol of a man’s financial affordability. As a result, alcohol has become a “mask” people use to create the impression of success or of being able to “financially provide”. Moreso, the social phrase “Indoda must”, meaning there are certain expectations a man needs to meet before claiming his manhood, further perpetuates this pressure to look or be instantly successful.

We needed a creative strategy that overturns this superficial narrative of instant success to drive that we exist to inspire people to redefine progress for themselves.

Our breakthrough moment came when we realised that success is a myth, it’s an illusion. It is defined as reaching a desirable or favourable outcome. The reality is that when people achieve something they have marked as success, they never feel fully fulfilled as they then start to wonder what’s the next goal. This is because people are chasing a feeling of fulfilment. What we discovered is that this feeling of fulfilment is the sense of satisfaction and enjoyment you get from continuously doing or working on something you love. So, as a brand we found a golden opportunity to encourage our consumer to continue putting in the work for what they love and remind them that every step forward whether big or small should be celebrated, because their progress journey matters.

The journey of personal progress means that you are still not done. That you are still looking for more. That you’re still mastering. And that you still have a passion to be better. Therefore, Progress is brewed as slowly as our beer & just as satisfying to the senses, each sip better than the last. This landed us at “Better is Brewing” as our brand idea.

Knowing that our consumers attention is highly competed for, we had to find a way to get the consumer to see us as synonymous with progress. The answer to this was in reframing the social narrative “Indoda must” to “Indoda is”, in a way that puts our brand at the forefront of the conversation. Thus, we saw the opportunity to use our name as a mechanic to share a message about progress. Landing us with “I Amstel” as our campaign platform.

Amstel aimed to celebrate and enable the progress journeys of its target market by reflecting their voice through a campaign that glorified and activated their progress journey. We rolled out a 360 campaign that expressed and bought meaning to the “I Amstel” messaging. We then activated progress within taverns with our “Taverns of the Future” initiative, seeing 100 outlets upgraded. We also helped local entrepreneurs progress with our “The entrepreneur initiative”. It received 5023 initial entries for the top 40, and 8336 votes were received for the top 12 participants.

We saw a 12% increase in sales compared to the previous year. We also saw a 0.9 increase in brand power score, this is the third highest in the category against big budget players from SAB. The campaign also strengthened the Amstel brand as consumers started to associate Amstel as being youthful, innovative and as having good advertising.

The general youth morale in South Africa is low. We are experiencing one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. About 22.4% of graduates between the ages of 25-34 years old are unemployed. More so, the economy is on a downward trajectory, with the inflation rate continuously rising. This leaves people feeling like for every step forward, the economy takes them 10 steps back. There has also been a spike in suicide rates among males as financial pressures get to them, especially when success for men is equated to their financial standing. Of the 13 774 suicides reported in South Africa, 10 861 were men whilst 2 913 were women.

https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=15407#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Quarterly%20Labour,stands%20at%2034%2C5%25.

https://www.sasop.co.za/mens-health#:~:text=South%20Africa%20is%20ranked%20number,per%20100%20000%20for%20women.