SABMiller Winning in China

"Smart positioning" helped establish Snow as the No. 1 beer in China, BusinessWeek reports.

BusinessWeek last week charted the rise of SABMiller plc’s Snow beer brand to become the best-selling beer in China.

For the 12 months ended June 30 CR Snow brewed nearly 40 million barrels of Snow, surpassing the 37 million of previous No. 1 Tsiangtao (partly owned by Anheuser-Busch), the story says.

SABMiller’s success in China has been built on its strategy of acquiring breweries in “less affluent areas, including the northeastern rust belt and the populous inland province of Sichuan” – thereby creating a large footprint without paying steep prices. It also has relied on “smart” marketing to sell the brand.

...It slapped a shiny, modern label on the 50-year-old brew and launched a national ad campaign emphasizing the beer's freshness, complete with sweepstakes that reward winners with outdoorsy vacations. The marketing push is paying off as it presses into the big cities.