1. What do you think have been the marketing communications and advertising objectives of Asia Pacific Breweries for Tiger Beer from 1932 to 2012? What should be the appropriate marketing communications and advertising objectives from 2012 onwards? Why?
Tiger Beer being a beverage that cannot be differentiated very much from other substitutes such as Heineken and Carlsberg, generally focuses on advertising itself as a brand more than a beverage. At such, the focus of Asia Pacific Breweries for Tiger Beer on the marketing communications and advertising objectives from 1932 to 2012, is mainly to raise awareness of the brand, build brand loyalty and maintain brand image.
From the various examples provided by the case study, it is shown that Tiger Beer focuses on product advertising to promote the brand rather than using institutional advertising. Starting from 1932, when it was first launched, much effort was put on pioneering form of advertising under the product advertising method. This is needed in the early stages of the adoption process to inform potential customers about a new product. Tiger Beer uses “local newspaper the Straits Time” and “television”, as mentioned in the case study, to generate publicity and create awareness. Subsequently, competitive and reminder advertisements were employed to further bring about its advertising objective of raising awareness of the brand.
From 1932 to 2012, Tiger Beer uses different modes of advertising media to reach out to its customers. It uses television, football and social media such as Facebook and the internet as well as engaging activities such as Tiger Translate (a platform for artists to showcase their talent) and Tiger Live (Southeast Asia’s first multisensory brand entertainment centre). In general, it relies more on traditional communication media like newspapers and television than the other mediums.
From 2012 onwards, the advertising objectives can still remain the same as the initial one but perhaps focus more on building brand loyalty and maintain brand image. As Tiger Beer is fairly established globally now, raising awareness of its brand may be of lesser importance. Furthermore, many close competitors are coming out with numerous new products nowadays, it is thus foreseen that Tiger Beer may involve in creating new product or improvement in its product lines to compete with its rivals. Hence, the advertising objectives may also eventually include publicizing on the changes in its marketing strategy such as changes in price or introducing a new product. At such, all three forms under the product advertisement (pioneering, competitive and reminder) will still be used frequently.
The advertising medium that Tiger Beer uses may also switch more towards nontraditional communication media such as place-based media and social media, due to possible reasons like higher cost in traditional media or changes in customers’ taste. •increase consumer awareness of Tiger Beer brand with clear and consistent message. RIP objectives. •now own by Heineken, is it important to communicate this to consumers?
2. Who are the target customers of Tiger Beer? What do they look for in a beer? How would that affect the Tiger Beer’s advertising messages?
The target customers of Tiger Beer can be segmented by demographic, lifestyles and attitudes factors.
Firstly, one of the target customers of Tiger Beer is young adults who seek a sense of achievement and accomplishment. On the surface, these customers like the idea of feeling a sense of strength, superiority and status like a “winner”, by drinking beers. As men are generally more responsive than women towards the idea of having power and strength, and with the common stereotype nowadays that it is essential for a man to have status or rank, the target customers of young adults can be further narrowed down into male young adults.
This can be supported by the many advertisements of males being the heroes who saved their girls, as portrayed in the case study. As a result, over the years of advertising, Tiger Beer has focused mainly on communicating the message of “winning” to its consumers, identifying Tiger Beer as a brand for “winners”.
While for taste wise, the target customers are not towards only the male young adults, but a mass audience who prefers unique and “distinctive taste”. Recently, Tiger Beer also targets its audience towards sophisticated and urbane working adults who look for a lighter taste of alcohol in the beer and a refreshing feeling after drinking. Hence, Tiger Crystal was introduced. With the change in the preference in the beer, the advertising message was altered accordingly for Tiger Crystal too. Instead of portraying the “winner” image, the advertisement focuses more on visual effects which can bring forth a cooling and refreshing feeling after drinking Tiger Crystal. In addition to that, Tiger Crystal is packaged in a “sleek 300 millimeter glass bottle”, which further illustrates the classy image of it.
Another group of target customer will be the people with interest in football. These customers connect football and Tiger Beer together, such that Tiger Beer gradually becomes the necessary complementary drink while watching a football match. With that, the advertising message will then focus on linking football and beer. In the case study, it was known that Tiger FC was formed, for football fans to get together, discuss football and watch football matches, together with Tiger Beer.
Also, Tiger Beer has been the sponsors for Tiger Cup and live telecast of various football matches. It also organized street football events in different countries. Using all these exposures related to football, the message of the connection between Tiger Beer and football was clearly conveyed to everyone. We also can observe that this category of customers, is looking for the brand image in a beer. They are able to associate Tiger Beer with football and often stay loyal to the brand throughout.
Tiger Beer also targets its market towards customers with an interest in arts since 2005. In this context, customers do not look for taste in a beer or so, but relate Tiger Beer to arts. The lifestyles of this targeted customers are towards arts. Advertising message hence has to be clear and consistently related to arts. Tiger Translate was yet another activity opened up as a platform for emerging Asian artists, film markers, designers etc to showcase their talents. Committed to showcasing these word worldwide, event and exhibitions have been held in leading cities such as New York, Berlin and Beijing and often attract a huge crowd with interest in the arts areas. •locals and foreign
•higher income
•taste
3. What advertising appeals, themes and executive styles have been used in Tiger Beer commercials? Should these be continued in the future? Why? Different advertising appeals, themes and styles were used in Tiger Beer commercials and they are usually interlink with each other, for examples the theme decided will give an idea of how the advertising appeal and styles should go about. Also, all these might change with different years also.
Looking from the case study, it is clear to us that the central theme for Tiger Beer is “Winner” and it is still on-going until now. Emotional appeal is appropriate to be used in this case as it targets towards one’s aspects and feelings in status, pride and sense of achievement and success. Advertisements from Tiger Beer focus on brave, bold and notable actions to bring forth the message that Tiger Beer symbolizes steadiness and superiority. Often, slice-of-life, dramatization and fantasy are examples of executive styles employed in Tiger Beer’s commercials.
These styles center their ideas based on a situation or problem and how Tiger Beer can bring a change to it. This way of advertising should be continued in the future as it targets the emotional aspect which influence how consumers think, feel and act, resulting in a strong and long lasting impact on them. Besides, Tiger Beer was also rewarded numerous awards based on their advertisements, which further shows the success of this style and hence should be continue in the future.
Still surround the theme of “Winner”, Tiger Beer has also made use of humor appeal to reach out to many customers. Dramatization or fantasy styles are used again, but added in a sense of humor to grab more attention. Slightly different from using emotional appeal, animation style is used more regularly for humor appeal, possibly due to the stronger amusing and comical effect it can produce. For example, in Malaysia, one of the advertisement videos features two men fighting over Tiger Beer, transforming into creatures such as King Kong, robot and Tarzan. Tiger Beer also never forget to choose specific characters featuring in the video that symbolize strength or power to emphasize on the “Winner” theme.
Audience normally find this type of advertisement humorous and attention grabbing. This way of advertising should continues as it is very attention grabbing and consumers nowadays adore the idea of including humor in the advertisement. It allows Tiger Beer to stand out even more among all other close competitors. However, one thing to take note whether to continue also depends on what country it is and her existing culture. The effectiveness of humor appeal can differ and vary across different cultures.
Sex appeal was also used to target mainly the male customers. From various recent advertisement videos featuring sexy and attractive females holding on to a bottle of Tiger Beer or drinking the beer, it was observed that this appeal is a powerful instinctive attraction that will take the audiences’ focus from anything else. The use of a celebrity spokesperson under the executive style, can be applied here, for example the appearance of Jessica Alba in the advertisement. The use of this method can continue perhaps in Western countries who are more open-minded, but smaller frequency in Asian countries, who are more conservative and respond less positively towards the usage of sex appeal.
Another appeal was festive seasons appeal, whereby different advertisement were showcased during different festivals such as Chinese New Year, Halloween and Christmas. It brings forth a jolly feeling of celebration and party and targets mainly the consumers’ emotions and feelings. Often, dramatization executive style is used in this appeal as it is easier to depict scenes of celebration. This method is effective to reach out to people and tend to leave a lasting impact, hence should be continued in future. •theme : winners
•appeal : ego
•execution : fantasy/slice of life/rational and functional
4. What media has Tiger Beer mainly been using for its marketing communications and advertising messages? what are the reasons for its choice of media? what other media, do you think, should be used in future? Why?
A combination of different media were used by Tiger Beer for advertising purposes. Television and newspapers have been the main media that Tiger Beer used for its marketing communications and advertising messages. Other forms such as radio, magazines and internet are used as well, but with a lower frequency than the formal.
Television was chosen probably due to the factor that television being an image-building and visual medium, it offers the ability to convey Tiger Beer’s message with sight, sound and motion, which print media can never provide. This is especially so for Tiger Beer, who always seek to convey the theme on “Winner”, as it is relatively more effective to illustrate using television though actions, as compared to print media. Besides, television reaches to an extremely large audience within a short period of time.
As for newspaper, the main reason for Tiger Beer to utilize it is most likely due to excellent coverage of local markets, and the ease of placing and changing the advertisements. Besides, the cost of using newspaper is relatively lower than the other forms of media.
Radio and magazines were also employed to reach out to an even larger group of audience. Radio and magazines are beneficial to Tiger Beer in the sense that they allow Tiger Beer to choose a specific group of customers to target on. For examples, Radio 97.2FM and 95.0 FM are generally for adults as compared to 93.3FM or 98.7FM which target the younger generation like the students. Magazines such as Cosmopolitan or Elle are more suitable for Tiger Beer advertisement, rather than Teenage or Seventeen.
The usage of internet for Tiger Beer is also increasing with the rising prevalence of internet. It provides an avenue for inclusion of element of interaction such as games or search engines, which can engage viewers and its website(www.tigerbeer.com) allows prompt delivery of information to its customers. However, internet is not used as much as the rest as it usually reaches out to the younger consumers, who prefer online communication.
There are other mediums which Tiger Beer can also put in emphasis to further advertise its products in the future. One of the medium can be price-based media, where messages or pictures are placed in locations that attract specific target audience. In the context of Tiger Beer, messages can be located at stadium where football matches are held, bars, pubs, clubs and before any movies in a theater. The cost of price-based media is generally lower than traditional media such as television.
Another consideration can be outdoor advertising, especially for vibrant and busy countries whereby consumers prefer going out than staying at home. Outdoor Advertising can come in the form of billboards, kiosks and even road shows with sampling booths and sales promotions. This type of advertising reaches out to customers directly and increase awareness to a large extent. This medium is probably effective in the future because of a rising trend of consumers prefer outdoor activities.
