By Princewill Ekwujuru

Recent development in the stout market show that there is a new and interesting dimension  to the competition among the various brands jostling for patronage, until Nigerian Breweries Plc, owners of the Legend Extra Stout brand decided to revitalize the industry few years ago.

The market which was believed to be dominated by Guinness Extra Stout before Legend’s Real Deal campaign changed the growing intensity in consumer promotion deployment, brand activation, thematic and tactical creative campaigns and share of voice in the media.

Accordingly the marketing antics of  both leading stout brands in the market would take a while to abate. But the interesting part of the whole episode is that consumers are the focal point for this battle.

Having spent a better part of its early life trailing Guinness Stout, Legend Stout through its Real Deal campaign in 2012 recorded a milestone when it was announced the best stout in taste and quality at 51st Monde Award ceremony in Athens.

Aside its newest achievement, the brand last year launched the first consumer promotion in its history and rewarded consumers with instant gifts prizes such as TV sets, generating sets, BlackBerry handsets and many more.

In 2012, the brand also created an engagement platform tagged; Legend Real Deal Night, where consumers were invited to engage with the brand through music and comedy while instant gifts items were given out.

To continue its stride in consumer reward system, Legend extra Stout unveiled a revamped and repackaged Legend Real Deal promo Season 2 to further reward loyal consumers.

The promotion will reward consumers with 350 pieces of 32″ television sets, 720pieces of 130 litres of refrigerators, 720 pieces of BlackBerry Bold 6, 200,000 pieces of N500 airtime, 200,000 pieces of N200 airtime, 2.5 million free Legend extra stout and 25 individuals to shop with N1 million in Dubai.

Observing a boring and uninspiring stout market in the country, NB Plc in 1992, launched Legend to inject excitement into the category. The launch was meant to catch the younger generation in a more contemporary manner, associate the brand with already existing stout values hence the first copy line for the stout “Light up your life-Put a spark in your life.”

Twelve years later, the promoter’s quest to turn Legend into a brand beater in the dark beer category, Legend was reformulated and enriched with Vitamins to reduce the bitterness and alcohol content of the brand. The process also removed the observed ‘burnt taste’ that gave the brand the initial unpleasant flavour which was perceived not to be the quality of the ideal stout brand. Hence a new advertising copy was created “Legend makes you feel real good’.

Unlike previous activities around the brand, three years later, a new packaging, which involved change of bottle and labels were introduced to bring excitement to the brand and tickled consumers.

The brand throughout this period never seems to get it right in terms of positioning, packaging and quality but in 2009,

Legend was repositioned and repackaged to elevate the brand from savings to mainstream category.