I believe that
any brand can
continue to grow,
provided you
stay consistent
to your brand
equity and have
executions that
make you part of
the conversation
WINNING WITH CONSUMERS
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AMSTEL
The Sol brand, which became part of HEINEKEN's portfolio when it
acquired FEMSA's beer business, also has great potential, particularly
with a positioning founded on irreverence and authenticity. "Sol's
international launch started with Finland just last month. With Sol, we
are truly breaking new ground in terms of branding."
Meeting Local Needs
FIEINEKEN makes decisions about its brand portfolio based on
information provided by a tool called Building Winning Portfolios
(BWP). The tool uses a highly sophisticated methodology that takes
into account the profit pool, competitive environment, consumer
demographics and consumption habits to determine which brands
should be offered on which occasions.
"Within a brand spread, you typically have
room for local and global brands as there are
some needs that can clearly only be met by
local brands - for example national pride or
humour," Alexis explains. "The BWP also tells
us how much room for growth there is for
each individual brand. I truly believe that any
brand can continue to grow, provided you run
it properly, stay consistent to your brand equity
and have executions that make you part of the
conversation by surprising consumers every
day. We complete the BWP process in every
country every three years because the market
changes and we want to stay up to date."
Regardless of whether a brand is global or
local, HEINEKEN's priority is to maximise the
share of the profit pool. "If we see that we only
need global brands to achieve this, then that's
the route we will gladly take, as global brands
require less investment due to their size. If we
see that a global brand isn't an option, we'll
take alternative action. We'll do what it takes to meet consumer needs,
and most of the time this entails a mix of global and local brands. A
completely loyal consumer doesn't exist. Most consumers are repertoire
consumers. We want to be part of that complete repertoire with a broad
offering. There's even a little bit of overlap between our global and local
brands. We try and minimise the overlap, but it also helps to keep us
sharp."
Room for More
There is no magic number when it comes to local beer brands, but
Alexis believes that there is room for more. "As we move towards more
brands, we first need to complete our job on existing brands. It's a
question of prioritisation. The infrastructure that we've put into place,
which has now been rolled out completely, will help us to professionalise
not only our global brands but our local brands too. Our brand teams
have proven to be extremely agile. They've embraced our new ways of
working to professionalise our branding quickly and this was evident in
the turnaround on share growth in 2011."
38 I World of HEINEKEN Quarter 3 2012
