For decades, the most popular alcoholic beverage in Japan has been beer. Recently, however, occasions for friends and coworkers to meet for drinks have been decreasing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, Japan’s beer producers are facing a new challenge. With fewer opportunities to meet socially, not as many people—especially the young—are drinking beer together. So how can producers create opportunities for these people to enjoy the taste of beer?
Japan’s largest beer company, Asahi Breweries, decided to take on the challenge. It wanted to promote its flagship brand, Asahi Super Dry, to young consumers through the Line mobile messenger app, which is widely used across Japan.
Partnering with this client, Dentsu studied how Line is used by young people. We then devised a digital marketing campaign to make Asahi Super Dry more accessible to these consumers through Line’s messaging service.
Called Share Super Dry, the campaign enabling users to treat a friend to a beer unfolded as follows.
Analysis of young people’s use of Line app
When representatives from Asahi Breweries approached Dentsu to handle the campaign, they asked us to address three main issues.
First, alcohol consumption was declining among young people. Asahi Breweries hoped to reach young consumers by creating a new brand image for Asahi Super Dry and open up new opportunities for them to drink this beer. In the past, the brewer’s efforts had not been successful using other marketing approaches.
Second, the client wanted to demonstrate how beer can play a positive role in facilitating communication. This element of Japan’s drinking culture had weakened because of pandemic-related restrictions. Beer is not just a delicious alcoholic beverage, Asahi argued, but when shared among friends, it can bring them closer together and promote mutual understanding.
The company did not want beer’s positive role in facilitating heartfelt communication to be lost amid declining opportunities for people to meet over drinks during the pandemic. Therefore, it was seeking ways to have its Asahi Super Dry promote communication among people remotely, without them having to go out to meet over drinks.
Third, to tackle the above issues, the client wanted to use the Line app for its campaign to promote Asahi Super Dry. Although ads and discount coupon campaigns are commonly featured on Line, the brewery instead wanted more than the basic marketing techniques. It hoped to enable new purchasing behavior with the app. And through Line, it wanted to convey the goal of Asahi Super Dry—to allow people to share great times together.
Issue 1: Young people’s declining interest in beer
The client wanted to create a new brand image and provide new ways to reach young people, rather than try to differentiate its brand from competitors, as it had done in the past.
Issue 2: The pandemic limits opportunities to enjoy beer
The client wanted to find ways to maintain the positive role beer can play in facilitating heartfelt communication, even among people kept apart due to pandemic restrictions.
Issue 3: New customer touch point needed for Line users
Beyond the campaigns commonly deployed via the Line app, the client sought an all-new way to promote purchases of Asahi Super Dry under the banner of “Sharing great times together.”
As it considered these issues, Dentsu began devising a Line marketing campaign for the Asahi Super Dry brand. At the planning stage, we analyzed how the Line app is used by young consumers, who were to be the target of the campaign.
In the process, we discovered a pattern among young users that was to prove useful.
We noted that most promotions by companies on Line were intended to attract followers by reducing prices by, for example, offering a discount if a user added the corporate user account as a friend. But since many young users deliberately purchased stickers used for messaging, young consumers are willing to spend money to enhance communication.
Thus, instead of using a conventional product discount campaign, we saw the possibility of launching a campaign designed to encourage new purchases of products, taking advantage of the trend among young Line users to spend money for communication. And so began the Share Super Dry campaign.
Users can remotely treat friends
The Share Super Dry campaign provides a service that allows users of Line to purchase either a regular 350-milliliter can or a 340-milliter mug-style can of Asahi Super Dry as a gift for a friend, and, if they wish, send a special message and image of the gift to the friend. The campaign was first held from December 1 to 28, 2021.
The person wishing to treat a friend would:
- Verify their own age
- Write a message to the friend
- Include, in addition to a special message and image of the gift, a photograph or an illustration if they wished
- Buy a can of Asahi Super Dry using the Line app
- Select the friend to receive it
- Send the message
The friend receiving the message:
- Is given access to the Share Super Dry website
- Can display a coupon on the website and redeem it for a can of Asahi Super Dry at a convenience store
- Can reply to the message with a thank-you note
Young people are willing to spend money to enhance their communication on the Line messaging app. By taking advantage of this trend, the campaign was able to use beer as a means to reconnect people who have been kept apart during the pandemic. Buying a friend a beer, which previously we had taken for granted, was now made possible through this digital service via the Line app.
A switch in messenger
We designed the service to be simple, but paid close attention to many details. Most importantly, we focused on having the Asahi Super Dry brand included in messages shared among friends on the Line app with a view to developing a business, rather than just using Line as a means for advertising or marketing.
Generally, advertising and marketing campaigns are designed to sell products by having consumers receive information sent by the corporation providing the goods. This service, however, allows consumers to receive information sent by their friends rather than a corporation. We switched the messenger from corporations to people’s friends.
People who received the gift through the campaign should have a more favorable impression of Asahi Super Dry because, compared with a corporate ad or marketing campaign, a message sent from a trusted friend is special. Further, the Asahi official account was added to their friend list on Line when the coupon was issued, opening up possibilities for fostering brand loyalty.
Similarly, the users who purchased Asahi Super Dry through the campaign will have a positive impression of the product, since they are sending it to a friend as a gift. They are likely to become more attached to the brand than to other products they may ordinarily buy.
Historically, advertisers have focused on differentiating brands from those of their competitors, a process that can incur substantial cost. Moreover, there is no guarantee that successfully differentiating a brand will boost sales.
The Share Super Dry campaign was completely different from this method and, as explained above, it reached young consumers by using a new point of sale.
Positive user feedback, new ways to create touch points
The service was very well received. According to a survey of its users, 85% said they were satisfied with the service, while 83% said they would use it again.
In addition to the survey responses above, here are a few comments received from users:
“My husband has been assigned to work in another city, so I sent a message with a photo of our children to express my appreciation since we cannot meet regularly.”
“I thought it would be great to send a seasonal gift with a little message.”
“This kind of service is helpful for reaching out to others during the pandemic.”
Though the Share Super Dry campaign , I believe the service has pointed to a new way for promoting products on the Line app via everyday messaging among its users. It should also be possible to apply this method using other social networking services, such as Twitter and Instagram.
We at Dentsu will continue devising fresh and innovative approaches to develop consumer touch points for products and services.
Inquiries
Tomohiko Sano (Dentsu Business Producers Division 5)
https://www.dentsu.co.jp/en/contactus/
