Castle Lite delivering cold innovation in Africa
Delivering an in-store customer experience of extra cold beer requires good refrigeration.
Castle Lite is one of the biggest beer brands in Africa and has been built on one, single, simple idea of product value - extra cold beer.
The problem however is that delivering an in-store customer experience of extra cold beer requires good, consistent refrigeration - and with frequent power outages in many countries on the continent, and the fact that many beer retailers turn their fridges off to save money, consistently delivering this brand promise can be tricky.
Never short of a clever idea, the folk over at Castle Lite (together with a few partner agencies) can up with a clever device called the Cold Tracker; an adapted 3G device which could be fitted to the fridges and – courtesy of a built-in thermometer – could monitor both temperature and location. The device was installed in 212 fridges in retail outlets around Tanzania.
To incentivise retailers to keep their fridges on, geolocated out-of-home leaderboards were installed which displayed – in real time – which fridges in the immediate vicinity were offering the coldest Castle Lite.
This created the world’s first temperate-based media trading platform: cold beer and cold fridges in return for valuable marketing space. In addition to the real-time digital billboard exposure, participating outlets were also highlighted in their local newspapers through paid-for Castle Lite advertising and targeted social media.
For those outlets offering the coldest beer, literage sales went up, at times to the tune of 70-80% more than competing outlets who turned off their fridges. Participating outlets saw an average 41% return on investment against cold fridge running costs – making cold fridges good for business.
Africa is home to the world's youngest population, many of whom are entering the 'middle class' for the very first time. Building premium brands in this environment is vital and the brand offerings need to deliver exactly on the promise if they are to compete successfully in an ever growing and cluttered marketplace.
Great use of simple innovation here to deliver real value to the brand.