Scotty Cam: Building Stuff We Don't Want
Anyhow, they're rolling out a big promo with Scotty Cam, the DIY guru who could fix anything from your plumbing to the Middle East crisis were he to be given half a chance. The basic premise is that YOU, the lucky punter, can get to have a beer with Scotty at a designated location for about an hour or so. You can sense the excitement through the masses.
This is almost as good a promo as the chance to win a poker night with Shannon Noll. I mean, poker: target audience 25-35 male. Shannon Noll: target audience 12-16 female.
I digress. Suffice to say they are really pushing the product in order to gain distribution and trial. And they're having a lot of success. Unfortunately, the trial and success is at the expense of their own brands - Carlton Mid, VB itself and so on.
But their biggest mistake has been their inability to acturately name the brand. There is no real reference on the packaging to 'Mid' and this has lead to some customers labelling the product VB Gold, or more amusingly VB Mould. The consumers don't know what to ask for - which is a fatal brand mistake.
What makes this even worse is that current advertising campaigns for the brand have run alongside venue adverts, promoting that they have the product on tap. These adverts running on national radio have DIFFERENT names for the product - the official company one calling it VB Mid, the venue advert labelling it VB Gold.
What does this do for the consumer? Well, obviously it confuses the hell out of them. What do they ask for when they get to the bar?
One can only guess the reason behind Fosters inability to name the brand properly. I suspect they wanted the general public to suruptiously name the product 'Gold' for them, to attack their main rival, XXXX Gold. Or maybe they just didn't like the term 'Mid' and were hoping the public would find a better name for it.
Either way, the expression is 'a dog's dinner'.
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