Which is Really Real, Harp, Legend or Turbo King?

Currently, many alcoholic beverages in the Nigerian market wear the word ‘real’  as their brand identity. From billboards to television, radio and below-the-line, their vociferous claims of reality stare consumers in the face. Within the beer category, brands like Harp lager from Guinness Nigeria, Legend Extra Stout from Nigerian Breweries and Turbo King from Consolidated Breweries all employ the word ‘real’ in their campaign slogans. Ralph Tathagata x-rays the pay-off-lines, asking ‘who is real among these players?’

According to experts, for a marketing communication campaign to be engaging, there is a need to create clear differentiation for each brand thereby driving its growth and market opportunities distinctively. This market differentiation begins from the look and feel of the brand, to its colour, shape, and size in the marketplace alongside quality advertising pay-off-lines in order to make it stand out and connect with consumers.
More often than not, brands leverage on campaign slogans to emphasize heritage, success and other forms of associations to position and reposition themselves in the minds of consumers and prospects.
Internet search reveals that advertising practice in the United Kingdom, from where Nigeria borrows its code of practice, does not allow different brands to allude or explicitly attribute the same quality to themselves especially in the choice of words.
To establish your position, branding experts say that you must often communicate your brand quality to consumers/prospects in a manner that conveys and reinforces your uniqueness. If the statement: “Marketing is a battle of perception, not products” in Jack Trout’s book, Differentiate or Die is anything to go by, then the recent M2 findings might have detected a psychological flaw in some Nigerian advertisers’ reasonings and choice of words.
Against all these, where does one place the pay-offs from the brand managers and copywriters of Harp lager beer, Legend Extra Stout and Turbo King?
In the titanic struggle for reality, Harp lager beer, Legend Extra Stout and Turbo King have been battling for mind/market share on who is ‘real’.

Harp’s Copy
About two years ago, Harp lager beer was given a label and shape overhaul, resulting in the new look that now differentiates it in the Nigerian market. A campaign was also developed for Harp at the time. “The Real Beer for Real Men” commenced with the use of three well-known celebrities, DJ Jimmy Jatt, Katung of Big Brother Nigeria fame and Desmond Elliot, as brand icons representing “Realness.”
On what makes Harp think it is ‘real’, staff of the marketing department of Guinness Nigeria did not respond to the e-mail sent to them, neither did the customer care unit answer the various calls put across its lines.

Legend’s Copy
Legend was introduced into the Nigerian market in 1992 with the copy “Light up your life.” In 1994, the brand was re-launched with another copy, “Legend makes you feel real fine.” When Legend Extra Stout was re-launched in a new bottle in 2004, the copy read: “It is not in the bottle, but the content.” Another one read: “It’s not about you, but about us.” Yet, another asserted that “Legends don’t change their shapes”. However, in 2009, Legend radically rebranded in what could be described as a campaign of reality with a new bottle, new body, new back and neck label, new crown cork and new copy. The current copy is reminiscent of the 1994 copy and reads: “The Real Deal, The Real Brew” and “Legend, the Real Deal”.
On what makes Legend unique, Jacco van der Linden, Marketing Director, Nigerian Breweries in the company’s in-house report was quoted as saying, “The plan is to shift to a higher gear now. The best element is in the class communication which is very different from what competition offers. For those still in doubt, just try it as the taste of the pudding is in the taste.”

Turbo King’s Copy
With the introduction of Turbo King by Consolidated Breweries in 2007, the economy segment of the beer market in Nigeria witnessed an increase especially in the dark ale category. The brand was introduced in 72cl brown bottles with 6.5 per cent alcoholic content and black, red and yellow motiff of a lion.
Consolidated Breweries’ lion now roars into the minds of the people via billboards across Nigeria, “The Real beer for the real people.”
Adejare Yussuf, Regional Commercial Manager, Western operations, Consolidated Breweries, also did not respond to several calls made to his cell phone to ascertain what makes Turbo King the ‘real’ beer for the Nigerian consumer.

NCC’s Position
As the regulatory body against copyright infringement and all forms of plagiarism, Emeka Ogbonna, Lagos Zonal Manager, Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), reasons that from the semantic point of view, nobody can actually lay claim to the word ‘real’.
“To start with, I think the word ‘real’ is nobody’s creation. Neither can anybody lay claim to the word beer. There is no originality in those two words which the marketers of these beer brands are contending with,” he says.
He believes that since the campaigns are targeted at literate rather than illiterate Nigerians, consumers should be left to decide which brand is the real beer.
“The distinguishing factor might even be in the name of the brand and not the copy. So it’s a technical legal issue that one has to be very careful in handling,” he says.
From the marketing point of view, however, Ogbonna holds that marketers of consumer goods should distinguish their brands in their copies from competition to avoid infringement.
He also says that none of the brand owners has come forth with claims of who first conceived and started running the copy, promising the NCC will look into the issue.
“It is good to raise issues like this before they start causing problems within the industry. NCC strongly maintains that people’s copyright should not be tampered with in whatever guise. Although I don’t know who came up with the idea of real first before others, those who came after the originator of that copy might be held liable for infringement immediately after our investigation,” he says.
On whether failure on the part of the original owner of the copy to register the copyright might rob the company of legal ownership, Douglas Igwe, NCC’s legal adviser says no.
“Within the ambit of Nigerian Copyright Laws, owners can still enjoy rights without registration. Although that aspect of copyright falls within Trademark Law but I am quite sure that an individual or a corporate body can have rights without registration,” he says.

ACC’s Position
A representative of Anti Counterfeiting Collaboration (ACC) of Nigeria, Uche Nwokocha, warns that brand owners should use their copies to enlighten rather than confuse consumers.
“Even though that may fall within the jurisdiction of the Consumer Protection Council, brand owners in the course of marketing their products should also enlighten rather than confuse consumers for the sake of competition and profit maximization,” she says.

Do These Lines Breach APCON Code?
The Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) on its part reasons that the issue of reality is a very technical one, maintaining that each brand owner should communicate its unique selling proposition (USP) in its campaigns.
A source at APCON who craved anonymity says that the issue is purely an NCC matter but maintains that the players in question should be tasked to project and communicate their USP and leave the consumers to decide who is real.
“This is a very technical issue and I commend you for raising it up. Although it’s not APCON’s issue, I think owners of consumer goods should endeavour to create a distinction in their attempt to market their products via advertising. They should be compelled to project their uniqueness even in their communication materials,” he says.

Thinking Differently
Some experts reason that laziness and lack of creativity is responsible for copies such as the ones in contention.
“In as much as it appears very technical to determine whether these various copies are infringing on one another, I see it as sheer laziness on the part of copywriters. Though some of them may see it as smartness to market their products by passing off on other people’s intellectual property, I still see it as the dearth of creativity in this part of the world,” Ogbonna says.
In conclusion therefore, copywriters for the three beer brands in question may be good students of Late Howard Gossage who held that “the objective of advertising should not be to communicate to consumers and prospects at all, but to terrorise competition`s copywriters.”
What the reality and originality of these brands and their taglines will unfold is now left entirely to time and circumstances, given that regulators will not enforce a right that is not reported to be infringed upon. The various brand custodians also appear bent on “terrorism” and “counter-terrorism” instead of distinction. In all the public end up as the losers as the various brands smile to the banks on the basis of this not so clear “real” campaign.