2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Creative Strategy?

Through a new repositioning campaign Birell was able to target a completely new generation and shift an established outdated brand persona to a younger, more diverse personality that encouraged brotherhood. It yielded high results, high word of mouth and positive sales in a short period of time helping establish the brand for years to come.

Background

Birell is the market leader in the plain malt category in Egypt. It is a bitter malt drink that is mainly targeted towards young males. But as generations change, so do tastes and sensibilities. With dropping sales numbers and a weakening grip on an ever-changing youth segment, Birell needed a new breath of life, a new positioning to reconnect itself with a younger more diverse crowd that could sustain itself for the coming years. Birell was the Malt drink of choice for young Egyptians, but as they say, never rest on your laurels.

The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)

For years, Birell owned a leading market share in the non-alcoholic beverages category in Egypt with a successful communication platform titled ‘Man Up’. This was targeted towards Millennial Male youths and was designed around the bitter taste of the Birell and encouraging youths to be masculine, bold and self-confident. But as this generation grew older, Birell was left with a new Generation Z that had different wants and needs. ‘Masculinity’ was seen as old and tired and it didn’t reflect a new more caring, inclusive and brotherhood focused generation of males in Egypt. Birell needed a new brand repositioning not by desire but by need.

The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)

To begin our journey, we made qualitative research into masculinity that delved into the drastic clear change that happened in Egyptian society post revolution(s). The objective of this research was the fully dissect the concept of Manhood and understand its connotations from both genders perspectives. This research also covered perceptions of Manhood, associations between men and the attitude between men across various roles and situations. The second step after this research was to provide quantitave and qualitative approach aiming to rejuvenating Birell’s ‘Man Up’ positioning by becoming more relevant to newer generations. We identified Manhood, broke it into buckets and created consumer insights that lead to drafting new concepts. From that we realized that the definition of manhood we projected before was a man who pretends to be a real man. There it was. Aha! A real man doesn’t pretend, he shows he cares. He tries to be a brother.

The Creative Idea (20% of vote)

Generation Z care about each other. A real man doesn’t pretend, he shows he cares. He is a brother. We know between real friends, moments bring you together and form unbreakable bonds. We focused on these moments, where the core concept of brotherhood is tested further and those bonds are forged. These moments turn them from friends to brothers. They form a brotherhood that can never be replaced. Birell wanted to own those moments and become the brand that supported Generation Z and their love for each other which is exemplified through our tagline “What’s between us, stays between us. Brotherhood has a unique taste between us” All the copies were born from insightful real life insights our target could relate too and these situational awkward moments encouraged the bubbling of new brotherhoods.

The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)

Birell’s results were remarkably significant with a high engagement rate, showing how the new positioning was spot on in terms of tackling a new angle of manhood that is more relevant to today’s Generation Z. On TV, the campaign overachieved with 56% GRPs, and digitally it reached 73% of our T.A, with a completion rate of 18.96%, which is 9% higher than the benchmark and an engagement rate of 39.1%, which is also above the benchmark of 38%. Additionally, the campaign yielded the highest level of unaided ad recall moving ahead of competitors, also showing strong results with message association based on Facebook Brand Lift Study. Finally, the campaign has also positively impacted the sales returns with an increase in the volumes reaching an unprecedented peak in the last 4 years, in addition to 13% increase in the post campaign period vs same period year ago.