But then, rather than surprise observers with a new package or fresh strategy, Drenth has gone for a shot gun approach, by quickly dusting up and deploying the old marketing ammo used by his predecessor, Van der Linden.This is a sales promo dubbed The Real deal.

Since his appointment last February, Drenth appears to have worked so hard over the company’s leading brand products that he may have some strategy fatigue over Legend. Van Der Linden’s Legend ‘Real Deal’ is what a sales promo is with its limitations.—it helps to raise sales in the short term.

So, Drenth has to come up with a more enduring marketing strategy for Legend including a very imaginatively creative and sustainable communication platform. In spite of several years of marketing and advertising the Legend brand the ad message that appears to have stuck with the brand is – the real deal. Yes, that is the Legend slogan. But the real deal sounds like any one’s deal.

What this means is that the brand is yet to come up with an imaginatively unique ad or a unique slogan or attributes communicated to its target audience which can be associated with the brand--alone.Previous advertising suggested that the brand was the better stout because it was the real  brewed stout. Then, a ‘variant’ of that message began to assert that Legend was the real deal.

Either way, the brand’s communication was hanging on a limb. The real brewed stout? Therefore, the other stout—Guinness which it was trying to gain on, is not ‘real’ brewed? I thought Guinness invented stout and could be considered the gold standard for stout? Did that message pass the believability test? I would say no.

Of course, Legend’s seemingly spurious claims prompted the tongue-in-cheek, almost playful,or sneering ad campaign. Guinness – ‘a beer with many imitators but certainly no equal.’ It was a masterful piece of work from the market leader, Guinness.

Needless to say, Drenth needs to come up with something new to sell the Legend brand to a discerning target market.