The Challenge
Club Colombia is an established beer brand in Colombia and competes in a market typified by barely differentiated brands. SABMiller, the brand’s owners, identified an emerging set of consumer types and potential for the brand to become the first premium Colombian beer. However, with a 1.8% market share and a general perception that beer was an unsophisticated alcoholic beverage, to do this the brand would have to support its quality positioning and compete with whisky and wine as well as imported beers.
The Brief
Enterprise IG was briefed to redesign the cluttered and dated aspects of the product’s packaging, and enable the brand to deliver ‘more of what I look for in a beer: taste, authenticity and the satisfaction of discernment.’ The design had to meet targets for consumer perception that it was a brand with refined taste that was extra matured. The packaging needed to have strong visual impact whether it was on individual bottle or retail multipacks, and the brand iconography would have to be able to be painted on the outside of bars, as is traditional in Colombia.
The Design
The Enterprise IG team found inspiration in the culture and artefacts of the ancient Muisca tribe, whose ‘tunjo’ symbol represents tradition, provenance and culture. The symbol, used alongside the traditional gold and red colour palette of the label, evokes Colombian pride and discernment. The bottle’s neck label explains more about the beer’s fine ingredients and maturation, justifying its quality positioning. On multipacks, a gold outerpack, with rays of light radiating from the tunjo symbol, makes the product stand out when merchandised in supermarkets in horizontal blocks, showing a rich seam of gold running across the shelves.
The Results
The redesign of the Club Colombia pack was launched in November 2006 after a design investment of £60,000 (Euro 88,200), and produced a sales uplift of 65% compared with the same quarter in the previous year. Market share post re-design rose to 2.6% and share in supermarkets increased from 10.1% to 17.5%. All the targets regarding consumer perception were met, with 53% of surveyed customers agreeing that the beer had a refined taste (against a target of 40%). New listings in restaurants also reflect a change in the way Colombians view premium beer.
