The Bud‘s Bus is here. Clumsily made its turn around tight street corners, where beer drinkers sat on baby-size stools, surrounding a hot-pot or sea food grill.
I saw the Budweiser chariot and horses at the Super Bowl in Miami.
And now, the brand appears here on the opposite side of the world.
Still, someone in International Marketing needs to take context into their planning.
Can’t go around the tight streets of Saigon with a moving billboard which can’t turn the corner.
Things have to be nimble and the look has to “fit”, like KFC on-wheels (scooters).
Now, that takes experience (KFC happened to buy all the Chicken Town outlets for instant dominance).
I must admit, the Bud girls tried hard. They helped out the servers at their assigned restaurants, on par with Hennessy PR girls, who dressed up as if the were beauty contestants.
Bud is playing catch up, before another Japanese brand, locally brewed, begins to make its entrance.
It’ s hot here. And beers have become the liquid of choice. Either that, or you get ENSURE as hospital-visit gifts.
Vietnamese male don’t like to go anywhere near milk, except when it’s mixed in their iced coffee milk.
I notice two beverages that dominate here, and have been for a while: iced coffee milk and Heineken.
One to put you to sleep and the other to wake you up.
And the cycle has never ended, at least for the past decade or even longer. The spirits business promises higher margin than food, which in the Vietnamese slang, “moi”, i.e. appertizers add-ons, translated into higher bill, which requires drinkers to work harder, thus, more stress to be released….)
It’s the loop, very much like the loop in the States, except in the States,
people live to work (to pay for their expenses, largely bank-own housing.) Here, at least in the South, people work to live, as observed by one Vietnamese now lives overseas. Knowing this, Budweiser should
take a page from KFC play book: beer on wheels, and not huge trucks that can barely negotiate the turn.
Thang Nguyen 555 