This is the story of how Australia’s ultimate challenger brand overcame its biggest challenge to date.

As production challenges limited distribution and Beam Suntory was forced to cut back on price promotions, creativity and brand building advertising was the only tool available to reduce price sensitivity and increase value sales.

We reinvigorated the long-running ‘Over Beer?’ campaign by tapping into a powerful cultural insight about Australian beer culture, recruiting a record proportion of beer drinkers to Canadian Club and establishing the brand as Australia’s most loved spirits trademark.

Canadian Club’s long running ‘Over Beer?’ campaign had successfully made inroads into beer territory by challenging Australians’ cultural obligation to drink beer. But maintaining that growth was becoming increasingly challenging with the brand’s most recent campaign failing to reach the heights of earlier efforts.

Alcoholic beverages was a declining category - in June 2022, 2% fewer Australians reported drinking alcohol in the last four weeks compared with the same period a year earlier. And the Dark Ready To Drink beverage segment, home to Canadian Club, was forecast to remain stagnant over the long term, with consumers drinking less and increasingly seeking out ‘better for you’ light RTDs.

Objectives:

1. Grow sales value +XX% to $XXm

2. Grow % beer drinkers consuming Canadian Club to XX%

3. Become Australia’s most loved spirits trademark

4. Increase ‘proud to drink’ by XX% and ‘worth paying more for’ by XX%

Beer is inextricably intwined with Australian culture. Many of the nation’s favourite ads are beer ads. It’s the default drink and a rite of passage for fathers to buy their son a first beer.

When former Prime Minister Bob Hawke ‘skulled a schooner’ (drunk a whole beer in one go) at the cricket he received national adulation. And years later, a successful brewery was launched in his honour.

Years later, sharing a beer still symbolises the mateship and egalitarianism that defines Australian identity. So persuading Aussies to switch from their beloved beer to a Canadian whisky-and-ginger-ale is no small feat.

The campaign featured in this paper (Canadian Club’s ‘Who made beer king of the campsite?’) reinvigorated an established campaign platform ‘Over beer?’. The ‘Over beer?’ line had been used for 12 years, and in its most recent campaign iteration had been running since 2017.

In 2021 46% RTDs sold in Coles Liquor Group were discounted. However, global supply chain issues meant we couldn’t rely on a price-based volume play to hit target. And unlike competitors who’d focused heavily on NPD, we had no new product news. We’d need to use brand advertising to attract more drinkers despite higher prices.

Growth to date had come from challenging big beer’s cultural dominance, prompting Aussies to ask themselves whether they were ‘Over beer?’.

But after recruiting a record XX% of beer drinkers in March 2020, this proportion had shrunk to just XX% by March 2022 . This didn’t just pose a commercial challenge, it prompted us to ask ourselves: after 12 years, is Australia over ‘Over beer?’

Strategic Challenge

Reinvigorate the ‘Over beer?’ campaign to drive value growth by simultaneously winning over Aussie beer drinkers and reduce price sensitivity - in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

We delved deep into Australian pop culture, scrutinised data on leisure habits and analysed beer category advertising to reach our core insight:

While most Australians live in the suburbs, our spiritual home is the great outdoors – and big beer has well and truly set up camp there

Despite 67% of Australians living in capital cities, from the serenity of Bonnie Doon to legends like Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee, nowhere is as deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche as the great outdoors. And Aussies were spending more on camping trips than ever before.

Decades of beer advertising had conditioned Aussies to feel beer was an essential ingredient, with four of Australia’s top selling beers using great outdoors-themed marketing.

THE STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY

Subvert beer’s cultural appropriation of the great outdoors

– and show Aussies that even out here, it’s OK to be over beer.

The strategy led to a brilliantly simple creative idea:

“Who made beer king of the campsite?”

We irreverently challenged beer’s claim to be an obligatory part of Australian outdoor life, using humour to subvert category clichés. A simple creative approach built on tried-and-tested campaign elements, while bringing a freshness that would supercharge cut-through:

1. REFRESH – fresh insight and creative world, subverting the outdoors tropes of big beer (camping, fishing, hiking etc)

2. REFINE – an evolved comms planning approach, shifting from single hero TVC to a suite of SVOD and BVOD friendly spots, supported by OOH. These shorter 15” ads enabled us to dig deeper into a series of unquestioned cultural truths, e.g. why do we pour beer on the BBQ?

3. RETAIN – consistent use of distinctive brand assets (‘I can see clearly now’ music, Big Terry character, snowy vista endframe and ‘Over beer?’ line)

Despite unprecedented challenges, the campaign exceeded all our objectives and generated an incremental profit ROI $1.73 profit for every $1 spent.

1. GROW SALES VALUE

From: $XX

Target $XX (+XX%)

Result: $XX (+XX%)

GROW % BEER DRINKERS CONSUMING CC1

From: XX

Target: XX% +XX%

Result: XX% (+XX%)

BECOME AUSTRALIA’S MOST LOVED SPIRITS TRADEMARK

From: ‘Brand I love’ XX% vs Jack Daniels XX%

Result: XX% vs Jack Daniel’s XX%

INCREASE ‘PROUD TO DRINK’

From: XX index of category average

Target: XX (+XX%)

Result: XX (+XX%)

INCREASE ‘WORTH PAYING MORE FOR’

From: XX

Target: XX (+XX%)

Result: XX (+XX%)

The campaign also won Silver for ‘Challenger Brand’ and Bronze for ‘Food & beverage’ at the 2023 Australian Effie Awards.

Was this due to new product innovation? No, our range was significantly smaller than competitors and our most recent addition (Canadian Club & Soda) was introduced in 2021, so this was not a factor

Was this due to discounting or other price promotions? No, pricing increased by XX% as Beam Suntory significantly cut back on price promotions during the campaign period

Was this due to increased distribution or stock availability? No, production challenges meant we had less stock available than we would have liked, hence the need to increase price. In addition, our distributor's new deal with biggest rival Jack Daniel's led to confusion over priorities that hampered our retail presence.

Was this due to increased media spend? No, while our revised comms strategy meant a higher proportion of spend was shifted from TV towards BVOD, SVOD and digital video, total media spend was broadly in line with previous years

Canadian Club isn’t just challenging a category, it’s challenging culture. As detailed in the cultural nuances section, there’s nothing more central to Australian cultural identity than beer – especially when it comes to kicking back in the great outdoors. Admitting you don’t like beer isn’t just unusual, it’s practically unAustralian.

Yet Canadian Club has built its whole brand around challenging Australians’ unquestioning allegiance to beer. Making it Australia’s ultimate challenger brand.

But this isn’t only a story about taking on big beer – it’s also about how Canadian Club had to overcome unprecedented headwinds in the form of distribution issues, a proliferation of competitor NPD and the need to recruit more beer drinkers to the brand while raising prices. All in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

This campaign shows that with a strong cultural insight and on-point creative, there’s no challenge too big.