Spotlight: Skol Beer

Client: Ambev's Skol Beer Agency: F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Sao Paulo. Brazil's Skol influences popular culture to become the leading beer brand Skol beer has reached the enviable and rare position of a brand that doesn't even need to mention its advertising slogan anymore-because everyone in Brazil knows it and enjoys the commercials so much. It wasn't always that way. Back in 1996, Skol was Brazil's No. 3 beer brand, with a 19.7% market share, and had discarded 20 ad taglines in six years. Then F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi adapted a Brazilian idiom equating a circular shape with pleasurable smoothness using the phrase "The beer that goes down round" ("A cerveja que desce redondo"). A strong, humorous brand personality was born. The latest spots feature quick cuts of fun and gorgeous round images-ocean waves, a soccer ball, a beer glass seen from above, a half-naked couple on a round bed. They are intercut with a few somber square images, like a filing cabinet drawer and a Post-it note marked "Urgent." Other spots have characterized rival beers as square, compared to Skol's round smoothness. In one, a guy has to see a doctor because he has an actual square stuck in his throat from drinking the wrong beer. In another spot, a man sees everything as a square shape, even the breasts of a bikini-clad woman at the beach, until he drinks a Skol. Today, Skol is the No. 1 beer brand, with a 31.5% share of the market. And in Brazil, where advertising is an integral part of the popular culture, everyone knows that Skol goes down smoothly.

Spotlight: Skol Beer

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