Living la vida local / According to the agency, the brewery’s business challenge was to increase beer consumption. In the areas of Córdoba and Sucre a combination of continuous price hikes, high local taxes and low income meant that locals could not drink beer as often as they would like. However, by creating a beer made from local raw material (the cassava plant), Bavaria was able to keep taxes low and therefore its price competitive, making the beer more accessible.
Bavaria also had to position Nativa differently from Aguila Original, the leading brand in the region. By using its brewing expertise to address a serious local concern, Bavaria created a new product with a compelling origin tale, giving beer drinkers an array of reasons to give Nativa a try.
Importantly, Bavaria did its homework, interviewing farmers and consumers in the region to ensure it was involving and empowering the people it was seeking to help. Instead of actors, Bavaria Brewery created ads that used residents of the region and relied on local influencers in its communications. This helped the brand authentically reflect everyday life, ‘to counterbalance the feeling of oblivion and lack of visibility’ that locals feel, as the agency stated in its Gold-winning entry for 2022’s El Dorado awards (taking the prize in the Creative Business Transformation, Sustainable Development and Creative Effectiveness categories).
Social change / Bavaria Brewery is clearly paying attention to the issues affecting the lives of everyday Colombians. The financial pressures on farmers in Colombia worsened in April 2021, when protests erupted in opposition to a tax reform bill seeking to address the economic crisis generated by the pandemic (the resulting road blockages and raw material shortages hit the production and transport of food).
The Colombian government has struggled to persuade farmers to abandon the coca plant, favouring more draconian measures over financial support to plant other, legal crops. Bo Mathiasen, who heads the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Colombia, explained the struggle of Colombian farmers to NPR, ‘Colombia doesn't have a guaranteed minimum price for products and that makes farmers extremely vulnerable to commodity price changes. In the absence of subsidies and easy credit, small farmers are pretty much left on their own.’
But a report on the problem by the International Crisis Group found that ‘Given support, the vast majority of cultivators have already signalled that they would willingly forsake the coca economy. Farmers need more systematic help to make that transition.’
When states fail, brands can create goodwill and positive PR by stepping in, as we outline in our Brand Citizenship trend here. Here, by creating a new product and production model, Bavaria solved a real problem for farmers. There’s definite overlap here with another AB Inbev initiative, Contract for Change, which similarly saw beer brand Michelob Ultra financially supporting farmers. In both cases, the brands are acting charitably, while supporting their own business interests.
