Princewill Ekwujuru

Guinness Stout and Legend Stout have reved up their contention for the soul of the stout market with outburst of creative Out-Of-Home (OOH) sheets campaign.

Legend Stout, owned by Nigerian Breweries (NB),  fired the first salvo- with  a campaign to re-position itself in the market, and thereby revived rivalry with  Guinness Stout and altered market dynamics.

Guinness Stout however swiftly replied with a massive  multi channel campaign designed to maintain its leadership position.
The result was an avalanche of campaign billboards throughout the last quarter of 2010, with both brands deploying wittingly propelled campaigns; in radio and television stations, and also in the print.

Aside the billboard campaign sheets, Guinness, in order to remain connected to it’s consumers, introduced the Guinness VIP, the latest, and a telephone interactive platform that enables consumers stay abreast of happenings in the sporting world, especially football.

To further remain entrenched in consumers minds, Guinness has continued to adorn billboards with it’s ‘Level pass Level and ‘Some things are not equal’ campaign tag, but yet, the Stout market’s judgement of the clear leader in the market has primarily rested with the consumers, who before now had relished  Guinness Stout’s, ‘Udeme is a great man’ campaign.

In order to ensure that the Stout market remains under her control, Guinness introduced the 45cl bottle, driven by the tagline, 36cl more, for only N20, which consumers say is geared towards fighting Legend’s rising profile in the market.

Legend on the hand, does not do with frivolities, and that was why when it was first launched in  1992, re-launched in 1994 and 2007 in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, many wondered, why not Lagos.

This question was not far fetched, as a result, the quest to earn some indices in the Lagos market, Legend re-launched itself in  Lagos, changing  it’s  pay-off line to; ‘Keep It Real’ from ‘Carry Da Touch.’

Today, ‘The Keep It Real’ campaign is making serious incursion into the Lagos market and beyond, but  Guinness is holding strongly to its own.

Indications however came to fore that Ibadan is the stronghold of Legend, which it does not intend to relinquish so fast to contending brand (s) in that region.

Meanwhile, the management of NB at the unveiling of the brand in Lagos  said that, “the key  element of the re-launch was to unveil a newly and uniquely designed proprietary bottle for the Legend brand, with the objective of having the best tasting Stout in the best looking bottle.”

With this assertion, brand experts opined that the re-launch of the brand had re-kindled stiff competition in the Stout market.
Some consumers interviewed observed that  Legend has come to fight for a market territory, whilst some consumers said the re-launch in Lagos has shown that Legend is set to claim its place of pride in the comity of stout brands.

Brand handlers had equally acknowledged that the stage is set for the survival of the fittest.
NB on its  part  said, “there is clearly a strong leader in the market and it’s our business is to make competition tougher. “We will launch with a full marketing mix.” Perhaps, this justifies why the brew is now backed with activated 360 degrees marketing communications materials

To further put on hold the spreading tentacles of Legend; Guinness introduced Dark Ale in the eastern part of the country  to check make the incursion of  Legend into the market.