Guinness Gold shakes up beer market

By YUSUF MOHAMMED

The popular Guinness alcoholic beverage stands on its own. It is a dark dry stout. Not everyone that is into alcohol consumption drinks it. To some people, it tastes too bitter for them. Indeed, the soft underbelly of the giant brewer is its dearth of lager brands to challenge for the market.

Heineken, 33, Trophy, Star and Guilder are like part of the same family in terms of taste and look. In most bars, these are drinks that are prevalent. In order to break into the lager market, Guinness has come up with Guinness Gold, a larger beer and they are aggressive with their campaign.

Guinness originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James’s Gate, Dublin, Ireland, in 1759. It is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide, brewed in almost 50 countries including Nigeria and available. Sales in 2011 amounted to 850 million litres consumption.

It is still the best-selling alcoholic drink in Ireland home of Guinness and Co. The brewer makes almost 2 billion Euros annually.

Guinness’s flavor derives from malted barley and roasted unmalted barley, a relatively modern development, not becoming part of the grist until mid-20th century. Two months ago, the Landmark Centre, Victoria Island was turned into an ultra-high-tech audio-visual experience with iconic sound and events all designed to introduce the new premium lager beer, Guinness Gold.

Socialites were treated to a night of full flavor, high energy music, and great style.
The guests were entertained with the unique taste of Guinness Gold, served at three degrees in unique Guinness Gold glassware. The award-winning culinary maestro, Chef Fregz, was present to indulge guests with light bites that were beautifully paired with Guinness Gold.

BusinessHallmark gathered that Guinness Gold is a lager beer with a unique combination of high-quality ingredients sourced locally and internationally and provides fruity flavours that allow drinkers to truly savour its flavours.

Some of the major players in the alcoholic beverage industry seem to be repackaging old brands with new identity with introduction of new products with little efforts to rejuvenate the old brands.

NBL launched Ace Root in 2015 to compete with Guinness Orijin bitter, but failed to make an impact in the market like the latter.

Guinness Nigeria recently entered the market with this new product in order to compete with other lager beer brands.
Adenike Adebola who is the Marketing Director, Guinness Nigeria Plc was reported to have said that the company is thrilled to see the great interest in Guinness Gold.

Many ardent followers of Guinness would recall Satzenbrau, a Guinness brand that was launched in early 90s with so much pomp and expectations but did not last long in the market.
It made a comeback a few years ago and could still be found in some restaurants and bars, but the general consensus among beer fans is that it is not doing well.

According to findings, one of the major challenges of Satzenbrau was the aim to challenge Guilder by NBL instead of creating its own value for its customers. This same mistake ACE Roots made.

The consumers of Satzenbrau also had their complaints in regards to the ‘Final Word’ that made Nigerians lose interest in it. Irrespective of the complaints againt Satzenbrau, some analysts are of the view that the brand owners did not really tap into the consciousness of Nigerians.

Today, there is a perception that the new Guinness Gold is a repackaged Satzenbrau because of the way it looks and how it tastes. But the producers disagree, saying their new product is infused with amber malt and crystal malt and that this beer has a depth of flavor that no other lager beer anywhere can lay claim to have.
What brand pundits are asking is: why does Guinness need to introduce a new product to the market when it is struggling to give life to some of its other brands in that beer category?
Guinness Nigeria in 2013 introduced Orijin bitter drink which recorded huge success in the market. Packaged in glass and pet bottle, the drink unlike beer, does not contain barely or hops, rather it was marketed as a bittersweet blend with flavours of African herbs and fruit. The drink resonated with desires of consumers especially African men.

According to a brand analyst, Gbemisola Agbaje the urge for trying new things helps brands. They only fade away when they maintain the standard.

Every day people love to try new things. More and more people have been switching from one brand to another based on stories. As for Orijin, stories of libido and health are the strong points of the drink. Many people associate the brand with sexual prowess.

They also say it has cleanses the body of excess sugar, she said.
It is not known the strategy which Guinness Nigeria is planning to use this time to create the necessary traction for its new product which it did not apply to Satzenbrau.

Ademola Mustapha who is a distributor of the Guinness Gold spoke to BusinessHallmark about the brand in the market. He said, My understanding of the product is that it is moving well in the market. People are accepting it. I can tell you about some premium outlets that have it and are doing well.

On Adeniyi Jones, 2G1 Maximus Hotel, Jolly Friends on Ajao Road, Q4 and Presken Hotel on Awolowo Way. These are some of the outlets that Guinness Gold is doing well. For the first three months, we actually sold to those outlets. We started with one case and after two to three weeks they ended up buying five to 10 cases in a week.

Like Q4 for instance, they buy 15 cases every week. Presken Hotel buys 75 cases across their other outlets because they have about nine branches. Largely Guinness Gold is doing very well because the way Guinness is marketing it is a different ball game.

They actually recruited an agency to bring in sales reps for them to help them push it to the market. They have existing sales rep on ground but they don’t use those ones. They use the new ones.

Just to focus on Guinness Gold. You know by doing that, you have extracted only that brand from those guys and focused mainly on it. And the result has been impressive.

BusinessHallmark got in touch with Viola Graham-Douglas who is the Corporate Relations Director of Guinness. She said she would not be able to respond to the questions verbally and that the questions should be sent to her email. She did not respond to questions sent to her email at the time of filing this report.