Goodbye To Gulder Max

The historic introduction of Gulder Max in Nigeria presented the product as a force that will certainly redefine competition in the ever dynamic beer market.

Meanwhile, the brand owners turned deaf ears to the squawk raised by critics that the line extension could provoke intra competition and even erode the equity of its predecessor, Gulder lager beer. Now it seems like they have seen reasons to rest the extension. Ralph Tathagata chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the Macho Man (Gulder Max).

The news is in: Nigerian Breweries has pulled the plug on the well hyped Gulder Max. There is incontrovertible evidence that the brand has been removed from the shelves and will no longer roll off the shelves!The Gulder line extension, which received commendable marketing communications support, backed by huge budgets may have fallen to one of the famous positioning traps: The law of line extension.

Brand extension is one of the marketing strategies employed by brand owners to increase their revenue and customer base. In an increasingly border less marketplace in which brands can be as powerful as currency, stretching brands that already have strong equity seems to have become an ever more important avenue for growth among marketers. However, many attempts at brand stretch and over-stretch fail in the marketplace. This is due to the tendency of these extensions to confuse and alienate customers.

Rather than spend on established brands to stay alive, many companies spend on line extensions to the detriment of existing brands. Managing such pitfalls has therefore become one of the most Herculean tasks of marketing around the globe.

According to market watchers, over 80 per cent of all new products in the market are brand extensions. While emphasis must be laid on the importance of their success, findings have also identified an important segmentation variable for marketers to consider when launching brand extensions.

“A Man Was Here”…Is The Man Dead?
Gulder max is a sibling of Gulder lager beer from the stable of Nigerian Breweries (NB) Plc and was introduced into the market in 2006. If the market positioning declaration of the product is anything to go by, Gulder Max was positioned as a tough and ‘muscular’ brand with an excitingly bitter taste and more alcohol content than its ‘supposedly’ parent brand; a classic case of the Wordsworthian line, “The child is the father of the man (The Rainbow, a poem by William Wordsworth).”

“A man was here”, the Gulder Max advertising read, with an image of an empty cup presumably ‘downed’ by a consumer. But the questions on the lips of watchers and consumers are: “Where has the Man gone?”, “Is he dead or could he be presumed dead?” If He is dead, what is the cause of death?

Ironically, however, the heart of Gulder Ultimate lager beer, today, can hardly leap up to behold the rainbow (Gulder Max) in the sky because her baby is nowhere to be found. If truly Gulder Max is dead, an autopsy will reveal the cause of its death.

Why Did The Man Die?
The premature death of a brand can be a traumatic experience to its customers. When the death occurs, consumers and loyalists, poached from their different various comfort zones, always feel additional distress as they are relatively unfamiliar with the territory of other brands.

Therefore, any death occurring in the brand world requires a postmortem to be carried out. Autopsies are normally carried out at the domicile of the brand among its custodians, and a permission to carry it out is required. When the autopsy is complete, the remains can normally be released for burial or cremation.

Following the barrage of speculations, M2 burrowed into the issue to ascertain the veracity of the case. After making frantic efforts to purchase some of the products in Ikeja, M2 correspondents stumbled on some expired bottles at a popular joint on Allen Avenue. From all indications, it can be deduced that Gulder Max has finally gone to the knackers, and ultimately got a mercy killing by Nigerian Breweries Plc.

Efforts made by M2 to get the brand communications or marketing department of Nigerian Breweries to divulge any useful information on the out-phasing of Gulder Max met the brick wall.

Several phone calls made to Vindah Edem, Communications Manager, Nigerian Breweries Plc, yielded no significant result as he insisted that the matter was not supposed to be treated through a telephone conversation. He however made no efforts to void the speculation.

When M2 visited NB’s office, a call was put through to him telling him that M2 correspondents were at his office. Edem, however, said he was in a meeting and demanded that a questionnaire be sent to him via e-mail. The questionnaire was promptly put across to him, but he would not respond even as at M2 press time, his stance further reaffirming that he might really have nothing to dispel.

Was it that Gulder Max could not carve a market niche for itself or that the managers and custodians did not get it right?

In most cases, brand extension mainly takes the form of a brand name, but experts say Gulder Max did not fall into this trap. It was strategically positioned as a virile and masculine extension that made it quickly assume a fatherly status rather than that of a sibling. So why did it fail?

Some watchers say it’s one of the popular myths of consumer manipulation. Others even accuse the brand Managers of Gulder larger beer of not carrying out a thorough market research of the demography and lifestyle of consumers of the brand to ascertain the demand for a line extension. Many more opine that Nigerian consumers could not handle the strength of Gulder Max.

When Gulder Max communicated strength, vigor and every masculine association, did it differentiate the tangible (physical) from the intangible (mental)? Watchers also partly attribute the evident failure of Gulder Max in the Nigerian market to its inability to evoke a clear vision of the product’s function in the public’s mind.

Was it targeting bouncers and bodyguards with some intimidating macho constitution or some corporate brains with smart mental constitution? The marketing communications messages were clear as a product that stood for strength. But precisely what kind of strength were they talking about?

In terms of brand benefit transfer and perceptual fit, Gulder lager beer could be said to have offered Gulder Max enough benefit. But how much of this benefit that was truly desired by the target market, giving rise to the extension, can no longer be ascertained.

What happens to the bereaved consumers of Gulder Max?
Across the array of consumers, there exists, like in every other group, a breed that experiments with innovations. There is therefore no doubt that a class of adventurers (consumers) migrated to Gulder Max probably in a quest for power.

The questions on the lips of watchers are: “What happens to the consumers of Gulder Max?” Are the brand owners asking them to go back to Gulder lager beer that was left as a ‘sibling’ rather than the mother brand?”

“Brewed for the strong”
Critics maintain that this message communicated triumph over the mother brand, portraying it as weak and effeminate. It is therefore expected that the possible extinction of the Gulder Max from the market will cause some erosion on the total equity share of the Gulder family.