Backus, A Tale Of Leadership In The Peruvian Market

Backus AB InBev

Backus, brewing company belonging to AB InBev, leads the market in Peru. It has 5 decentralized breweries located in Lima (Ate region), Arequipa, Cusco, Motupe and Pucallpa; as well as a malting plant and a mineral water plant. Its portfolio contains both national and international brands which are well segmented and seek to satisfy consumers in some 200,000 points of sales throughout the country.

Backus' roots date back to 1879 and since then they have uninterruptedly worked in the country. In 2005, with the fusion with Bavaria Brewery and SABMiller, it became part of the world's second largest brewing group, with a presence in more than 60 countries and a portfolio of more than 170 brands. At the end of 2016, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced the end of its link with SABMiller, and from there Backus AB InBev was born. This is a truly global brewery with operations in practically all the large beer markets and a wide global portfolio.

In Peru, Llorente & Cuenca has been working with Backus for nearly 15 years, strategically accompanying the multiple changes that the company has undergone; proposing and designing corporate communication strategies and implementing consumer engagement initiatives for our global and local portfolio brands such as Corona, Budweiser, Cusqueña, Pilsen Callao or Cristal, among others; and generating networking spaces with the country's key opinion leaders and digital influencers.

Success Story: "A Better World": A New Era

In just a few months, Backus will have been part of AB InBev for a year. Today, it is part of a truly global brewery with operations in practically all the large beer markets and a wide global portfolio which gives Llorente & Cuenca a new group of possibilities to create communication strategies which:

Continue generating value and contributing to the positioning of the brand portfolio. For example, we have just been working on Consumer Engagement techniques with the beers Corona and Budweiser.
Propose engagement and communication actions in a situation of watchful consumers.
Identify new opinion leaders and influencers which become allies and communicators of the company’s message within those communities which are relevant to Backus. Now, we do not just generate spaces for communication with the media, authorities or institutions, but we also map relevant groups, such as the "social innovators" who start to play an important role in the forming of opinion trends.
We seek to be opportunistic in communication, in such a way that all of the company's actions reinforce Backus' image. An example of that is the week in which Merco Talento named it as the best place to work, and the General Manager of Backus, Rafael Álvarez, was on the front cover of APTITUS, the country's most relevant management magazine. ing)- Cristal.

Cusqueña Beer: Launch of a handmade woven billboard and the "Weaving our History" exhibition at the Pachacamac Museum

Cusqueña beer has its origins in the capital of the Inca Empire: Cusco. A city which has stuck to its roots and continues to do so as time passes. That’s the very source of the "Telar Cusqueña" (Weaving Cusqueña) campaign, which aims at reinforcing the association of the brand with such origins while aligning it with values such as innovation and contemporaneity.

With the aim of boosting the position of Cusqueña as a premium beer with traditional, Peruvian roots and demonstrating the brand's contribution to place value on Andean weaving, we prepared a communication strategy with key actions that prove the tradition, roots and authenticity of an innovative and contemporary brand.

We specifically managed an exclusive interview between El Comercio, Peru's main newspaper, and the Manager of Cusqueña. This was also replicated in the online version as well.

We obtained more than 100 published notes about the campaign through advertising, marketing, social responsibility and various outlets such as Gestion.pe, El Comercio, ElComercio.pe, La República, LaRepublica.pe, Publimetro, Ecomedia, Codigo.pe, Mercado Negro, Andina, El Peruano, Revista Velaverde, Revista Cosas, Correo, Expreso, Stakeholders.pe, Exitosa and more.

We also managed to get TV reports on América Televisión, Canal N and on ATV, on their respective programs: "América Noticias edición sábado", "N Noticias" and "ATV Noticias edición fin de semana".

The key results were that we reached a total of US$ 130,641 in free press, and an ANDA Award for Excellence in the category of Innovation and Integrated Communication (2016).

Campaign: #Waze por Buen Camino (Waze on the Right Track)

According to statistics from Peru's National Police from the year 2015, the main cause of accidents on the country's roads was the human factor, at 77%, followed by speeding at 32.5%, reckless driving 28.1%, driving under the influence 9.8% and pedestrian recklessness at 7.3%.

In light of this national problem, Backus decide to be part of the solution and created the program "Safe Driver Habits." The initiative promotes good driving practices in the country by distributing important information on road safety and driver responsibility.

As part of our dissemination strategy for the program, Backus developed a partnership with the NGO Transitemos, Pecsa and IMS – Internet Mobile Services, representatives in Peru of the mobile application Waze, to include road safety messages voiced by Peruvian rally driver Ramón Ferreyros, ambassador and face of the "Safe Driver Habits" campaign.

The aims of the Llorente & Cuenca public relations strategy were: To position Backus as a company committed to Road Safety; to have as many people as possible could download the Ramón Ferreyros voice command (personalized voice within the Waze app) in Lima; to disseminate the video on how to download the Ramón Ferreyros voice to Waze and reach half a million views; to use the Backus resources on social media, take advantage of Backus Facebook and Twitter resources to gain possible notoriety for our campaign in digital media, capitalizing on the image of Ramón Ferreyros and Road Safety as axes of communication; and to generate conversation and noise in our community in relation to the campaign.

The actions carried out included the following: a press conference to publicize the launch of #WazePorUnBuenCamino; the dissemination of a press release indicating the procedure for downloading the voice, dissemination of the campaign video on social media, sharing the message of road safety and inviting users to download Ramón's voice for Waze, placing social media posts with contextual content, additional recommendations and interactive content relating to road safety. We also arranged an interview with Ramón Ferreyros via live stream for the launch of the campaign and a back page feature interview with Ramón Ferreyros.

We reached 6.6 million views between Facebook and Twitter with content related to the campaign, 170,000 interactions with the content between the two social networks, 885,000 views for the campaign video (far exceeding the initial target of over 300,000 views) and 80,000 downloads for the Ramón voice on Waze, of which 60% were obtained through sources external to advertising within the application organically).

Awards

2015 Gold Stevie winner. Multicultural PR Campaign of the Year: Developing La Raza Celeste.
2015 Bronze Stevie winner. Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year – in Mexico, Central and South America: Developing La Raza Celeste.
2015. Grand Effie Award. Drinks. Enamorados de la verdadera amistad (In love with true friendship)– Pilsen Callao.
2015 Gold Effie Award. Product Promotions. Trae a tu pata (Bring your friend) – Pilsen Callao.
2015 Gold Effie Award. Drinks. Enamorados de la verdadera amistad (In love with true friendship) – Pilsen Callao.
2016 ANDA Award. Award for Excellence. Innovation and Integrated Communication- Products- Telar Cusqueña (Weaving Cusqueña)
2016 Gold Effie Award. Product Promotions. Visita a tu pata: Reuniendo alrededor del mundo a los amigos de verdad (Visit your friend: reuniting true friends from around the world) – Pisen Callao.
2016 Silver Effie Award. Sustained Success. Fresh consistency which continues to produce value and volume – Pilsen Callao.
2016 Bronze Effie Award. Launching of new products. Grolsch llega a despertar la creatividad urbana de Lima (Grolsch arrives to wake up Lima's urban creativity) – Grolsch.
2016 Bronze Effie Award. Product Promotions. Leyes de la amistad: Enamorados de la verdadera amistad (The laws of friendship: In love with true friendship) – Pilsen Callao.
2016 Bronze Effie Award. Product Promotions. First billboard woven by hand- Cusqueña
2017 ANDA Award. Social Responsibility. ¡Qué vuelva el Otorongo! (Get the jaguar back!) - Cerveza San Juan
2017 Silver Effie Award. Product Promotions. “Levantachelas” (Beer lifting)- Cristal.