Perception
Over Beer ?
Canadian Club is a brand of whiskey consumed all over the world, but in Australia, it is the fastest growing product in the dark spirits market (House, A, 2018). Over the years Canadian Club has continued to grow and develop partnerships in order to expand and push their product further. Canadian Club Australia developed the “Over Beer?” campaign which aims to challenge to the drinking culture of Australians and attempt to switch their focus from beer as their drink of choice, to a “refreshing alternative or simply great tasting whisky served neat” (Canadian Club, 2018).
Canadian Club is challenging the beer market with a different alternative (Green, R, 2017), allowing consumers to question the default choice of beer while simultaneously shifting our perception of dark spirits, as well as consumers’ perception of drinking as an activity. Canadian Club use an effective perceptual positioning strategy which uses the marketing mix to influence consumers’ interpretation of a products meaning by using its competitors (Solomon, 2019).
Strategies used in “Over Beer” ad:
- Lifestyle – The circumstances of when and where you would be drinking a ‘beer’ are being questioned, and reconsidered based on the attitudes of the characters in the ad. It is showing that Canadian Club is just as versatile as beer and is appropriate for all occasions. e.g. skiing, watching the footy, or regular consumption at your local.
- Attributes – The drink being poured from the tap is showing the drink is an icy cold, refreshing drink that is a better tasting alternative to beer, that satisfies the drinkers more, the ad aims to make the Canadian Club look superior to beer by highlighting these attributes.
- Competitors – The ad exposes the false belief that beer tastes good and shows people reconsidering why they drink beer. e.g. Big Terry. It directly targets the beer market and redirects the perception towards the more refreshing drink, Canadian Club. This strategy causes people to ask themselves why they actually drink what they drink.
- Occasions – The ad shows a pub full of blokes drinking beer in the afternoon, aiming the campaign at any occasion, formal or not. In the ad Canadian Club is compared to beer, and allows the customer to consider any occasion they would drink beer and substitute the drink and not the occasion.
- Users – Targets all consumers of beer as well as the younger generation starting to distinguish what their choices when drinking will be. The ad questions generations of beer drinking being passed down from their dads, which is why they drink beer… not because it tastes good.
- Quality – The ad suggest that the quality of Canadian Club is far superior to beer in taste and refreshing qualities and can be drunk in the same social setting.
Learning
How a brand is remembered is very important for the success of a brand or product. For consumers to have positive memories of a brand they need to go through a positive learning process in which marketers use different techniques to change behaviours of consumers. Marketers need to identify the best ways to reinforce learning about their brands, while being aware of the limitations of consumers’ cognitive capacity to take many new ideas onboard (Szmigin, 2018)
Behavioural learning theories:
- Classical Conditioning
- Repetition – process of pairing conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus repeatedly.
- Stimulus Generalisation – process that occurs when the behaviour caused by a reaction to one stimulus transfers to another stimulus.
- Stimulus Discrimination – process that occurs when consumers learn to differentiate a stimulus from other similar stimuli.
- Instrumental Conditioning
- Positive reinforcement – rewards provided by the environment strengthen responses to stimuli and appropriate behaviour is learned.
- Negative reinforcement – environment weakens responses to stimuli so that inappropriate behaviour is avoided.
- Punishment – the learning that occurs when a response is followed by unpleasant events.
Canadian Club paint a negative image of beer in their TV ads, really pushing Canadian Club as the superior drink. This is a form of negative reinforcement used by Canadian Club saying beer doesn’t actually taste good and drinking beer isn’t at all enjoyable. This shows beer drinking as a negative event and an inappropriate behaviour, which strengthens the response towards Canadian Club as a refreshing and satisfying beverage.
Canadian Club use repetition in their advertising campaigns in the form of colour, consistent themes and the same phrase over and over again. In most of their poster and TV ads, they use a snowy mountain backdrop with clear skies and their product front and centre, with the phrase ‘Over Beer?’ consistent throughout. In all their ads they repeat the icy and cold theme to promote Canadian Club as a refreshing and satisfying drink, and also use the same imagery on their packaging. This is a perfect example of how repetition of the same themes or phrases can prove to be effective in conditioning consumers and making them remember what Canadian Club is all about.
Self – Concept
A consumers’ self-concept plays a big role in a marketer’s efforts to promote a product. Self-concept is defined as the beliefs a person holds about their own attributes and how they evaluate these qualities (Solomon, 2019). Self‐concept is significant and relevant to consumer behaviour as many purchases made by consumers are directly influenced by the image individuals have of themselves, consumers may decide not to buy a product or not to shop at a particular store if they feel that these actions are not consistent with their own perceptions of themselves (Heath. A, 1998)
The 5 self-concepts:
Ideal self-image – a persons’ conception of how they would like to be
Actual self-image – a persons’ realistic appraisal of their own qualities
Expected Self-image – how consumers expect to see themselves in the future
Ideal Social Self-image – how consumers would like others to see them
Actual Social Self-image – how consumers feel others see them
(Sirgy, 2015)
The Canadian Club ‘Over Beer’ advertisement takes aim at self-image in the way of the individuals questioning why they drink beer, which taps into the actual self-image vs their ideal self-image. It also shows social aspects as it shows different people around the room and how they were socially affected by the choice of drinking beer. The concept actual social self-image puts pressure on consumers to conform to the social standard of drinking beer. Canadian Club aims to change the self-image of its customer base, and emphasises that consumers want to drink Canadian Club over beer.
Canadian Club ads consistently show the cool, refreshing, and better tasting qualities of their product and actively portray the self-image associated with drinking Canadian Club, therefore showing the expected self-image for the future, something consumers can work towards.
References
Canadian Club, 2019, Canadian Club Premium Whisky, accessed 30/3/19 https://www.canadianclub.com/history
Green, R, 2017, Campaign Brief, accessed 30/3/19 https://campaignbrief.com/over-beer-canadian-club-asks-t/
Heath, A, (1998) “The self‐concept and image congruence hypothesis: An empirical evaluation in the motor vehicle market”, Emerald Insight, pp.1110-1123, https://doi.org/10.1108/03090569810243749
House, A, 2018, Drinks Trade, accessed 30/3/19 https://www.drinkstrade.com.au/canadian-club-leads-dark-spirits-category-growth
Sirgy, M.J., 2015. Self-image/product-image congruity and advertising strategy. In Proceedings of the 1982 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) annual conference (pp. 129-133). Springer, Cham.
Solomon, M, Russell-Bennett, R. and Previte, J, 2019, ‘Consumer Behaviour’, Australian Edition, 4th Ed., Pearson
Szmigin, I. and Piacentini, M., 2018. Consumer behaviour. Oxford University Press.
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