In an increasingly competitive beer market in China (the biggest in the world), leading competitors are finding new ways to engage with key growth potential consumer groups in order to keep pushing for increased per capita consumption. One brand, Snow Beer, has made focusing on China’s youth market a priority, and as findings from our forthcoming report on Beer in China_ shows, they are engaging with that consumer group by tapping into a growing a growing hankering for adventure among younger Chinese._
Snow’s Yong Chuang Tian Ya (???? lit. “Globe Trekker”) beer has been repackaged with a rock climber on the label. There is not much scope for rock climbing in most of China’s cities, but the association this image has with extreme sports and adventuring means that Snow Beer appeals to, and is drunk by, skateboarding youths in cities like Shanghai, who identify with this kind of image.
This goes hand-in-hand with a recent shift in fashion trends among young Chinese, away from sportswear fashions and more towards outdoor wear. Even if hiking and skiing are not what Chinese youth get up to every weekend, it is an idea that has become increasingly appealing to them.
The rapid growth of China’s economy and changes in consumer lifestyles has created a rapidly diversifying interest among Chinese consumers in new forms of entertainment, including many sports, which is creating many opportunities for companies to become involved with sponsoring and nurturing participation of these sports in China. Snow Beer has built its association with extreme sports and skateboarding.
Engaging with youth trends is important for brewers because growth in the Chinese beer market depends on keeping young people interested in beer, and not go off and drink more soft drinks as has been witnessed in Japan in recent years. This is also one reason why beer companies in China like to engage with young consumer through the music scene, although efforts thus far have attempted to connect via the mainstream music scene, bypassing the very active alternative music scene in China, and therefore losing quite a lot of “cred” with Chinese youngsters.
Another niche sport gaining ground in China is skiing. In 2009 there were 350 ski resorts in China, and that number was expected to double by 2011, with the number of participating skiers expected to quadruple to 28 million. Not many city kids in China are able to go skiing though, but they do identify with the whole outdoor pursuits scene, and with that scene comes the inevitable fashion, and a beer named “Snow”. For instance, outdoor wear brand Northland held a photo contest in December 2010 to mark the launch of its 2010 snowboard wear. The snowboard jackets were priced at RMB1,580 each ($240 USD) for men and women!
Snow Beer is aimed at exactly at those consumers between the ages of 20 and 35 with a sense of adventure, even if it is only through dressing up. To engage with that sense of adventure among young Chinese, the company has been holding an annual Snow Beer “Globe Trekker” activity that takes participants (the campaign recruits young people in over a hundred cities across China to apply for a place) to extreme locations in China to experience some real adventure, take part in some social welfare volunteering and generally make the Snow brand look cool.
The idea of the event is for young people to challenge themselves out of their comfort zone, test their skills, strength and endurance by trekking to some of China’s wildest regions, and to become healthier, more environmentally aware and gain experience through involvement in activities that help society. Previous events over the seven years it has been running have taken expeditions to the deepest canyon in the world in Tibet, and in 2011 the expedition took the chosen youngsters to Kekexili on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, one of the country’s most remote regions.
By challenging China’s youth to become more than they were, and to aspire to adventure, Snow has touched on a sentiment that young Chinese are able to identify with. From this engagement the company has been able to build strong brand appeal among many sections of Chinese youth. And that has translated into an even stronger market share among a core group of growth potential consumers in a market where per capita beer consumption growth had been slowing.
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