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Legend Extra Stout Brews A More Rewarding Identity



Legend Extra Stout has impressively evolved. Once upon a time, it tried to be the uber trendy option, the one for the adventurous youth with extreme attitude. You may recall the print advertisement and TV commercials of those days— starring guys in leather and girls with obvious piercings and heavy jewellery. Gone are those days. Today, Legend is still positioning itself as the trendy option, only that this time, it is more in tune with the Nigerian reality. 

The evidence of the brand’s new state of play is in the series of consumer activation concerts which it is organising around the country. Legend’s new campaign is running on four legs: a new set of advertisement spots, the Real Deal Experience concerts, and the Taste and Tell blind taste test, and a consumer promo.


Although advertising campaigns, concerts, and blind tasting are not exactly a reinvention of the marketing wheel, Legend’s tone of voice reflects an updated marketing direction. The concerts, garnished with a Rotating Bar and games, go to cities with headliners that are most preferred in those cities. And when they reach those cities, they go to the places where a certain kind of grit, street cred, and raw Nigerian-ness can be found. For instance, the Lagos concert held in Okokomaiko, not the spot you’ll choose if you were staging a run-of-the-mill, me-too brand concert. 

So far, there have been four stops on the tour. Starting from Lagos, the train has gone through Onitsha, Port Harcourt and Ibadan. While the Lagos concert featured Oritsefemi on April 3, Onitsha hosted Kcee on April 24, Port Harcourt had Timaya on May 8, and 9ice was in Ibadan on May 20.

Just before the Port Harcourt show, Legend Brand manager, Oluseun Lawal said his team was "happy with the mileage the Real Deal Experience has gained.”  

The company is yet to announce more venues, for the series will not end till December 2016, but it appears they are getting their money’s worth from the project. 

The concert series, for example, works as an expedient companion piece to the new TV/Web videos, which show young men in everyday situations that can turn hairy very fast.

In one of the ads, an inexperienced husband is on the phone, complaining about his wife’s cooking. Then the wife walks in and hears everything. The advert ends with a poser: “What would you do?” and then offers three possible escape buttons. If you click the right one, you’re rewarded with a bold screen text: “Legendary”.

Other TV commercials in the campaign tell similar stories that resonate with today’s youth population— the ‘razz’-is-the-new-cool generation, the generation that balances its exposure to global affairs with self deprecating humour and a keen awareness of its complex local condition. That’s the one whose language Legend is now speaking. The brand wants them to believe that it is the real deal, and to prove that, Legend, as they say, is also trying to “keep it real”.

Part of keeping it real is being able to flaunt its genuine stout credentials. Legend is absolutely confident of its exceptional quality that it is risking a blind taste test as part of its ongoing marketing campaign.

Luckily for them, most of the time, according to Legend brand managers, consumers who try the blind taste tests choose Legend as the best tasting stout.

This is good news for Nigerian Breweries, because, finally, Legend may be living up to that strapline it has carried for more than 10 years – “the real deal”.

It took them a long time to get here, though. Since 2007 when the Legend bottle was first redesigned, they have kept iterating the design and look and feel, until the wide-shouldered bottle was created in 2009. They later added the gold foil to the neck and further tweaked the label to increase the size of the nameplate and give a little less prominence to the torch. Once that was done, Legend started to clearly distinguish itself from the competition, especially Guinness Foreign Extra Stout.

Now, all that effort may be paying off. Legend has not only created a distinctive visual identity, it is also gradually building a reputation as a brand with an authentic and believable voice. Vindah and his team see a testimony of the brand’s success in the way the target market is reacting to their experiential activities everywhere they go.

"With this stop in Port Harcourt, the Real Deal Experience has picked up its pace,” Vindah said. “We are so happy with the results and the positive feedback we have had on the Legend brand and the Real Deal Experience as a whole."

You might have seen this kind of transformation before, with Pepsi. From the shadows of Coca-Cola, Pepsi emerged as the edgy, adventurous, and fun cola brand. It now speaks with a voice that is uniquely its own and you see proof of that in the “PepsiMojis” campaign, for example. Yes, Coca-Cola did the emoticon thing first, but Pepsi’s emojis come off as more audacious, literally bolder – they even created a contextual tie-in with the popular soap opera Empire. Putting its money where its mouth is, Pepsi paid a ton of cash for five-second pod-puncher slots that ran during the TV programme.

As it was for Pepsi, it appears, so it is now for Legend. With a little location and casting twist in the ongoing Real Deal Experience concerts, Legend is pushing its message as the real McCoy to the front door of an audience with whom it has longed to have a relationship for so long.

Inside Nigerian Breweries, makers of Legend, the marketing executives confirm that this enhanced approach is perfect for having a meaningful interaction with their ideal consumers. 

"The Real Deal Experience is about making people appreciate realness and authenticity. Bringing fans face to face with one of their favourite music superstars is a very engaging way of putting across this message," said Legend Brand Manager, Oluseun Lawal. 

The Legendary ads will keep running, the brand handlers say. They will run alongside the blind taste tests and the Real Deal Experience experiential concerts. What is most important for Legend and everyone with whom it now interacts, however, is that it must retain this particular voice in an increasingly noisy market. So far, this is the voice that is getting more people to pay attention— the kind of attention that Legend can take to the bank.





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BHM is Nigeria's leading Media and Public Relations Agency, using traditional and digital techniques to deliver best-possible results for clients and partners. Operating from Lagos in Nigeria and London in UK, BHM delivers the best possible results in a system that’s full of promises.
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