Droga5 launches first advertising campaign for new account Tiger Beer

Droga5 has unveiled its first advertising campaign for Tiger Beer, 'Tiger Uncage', since winning the account last year.

“It’s a huge win for us,” Sudeep Gohil, CEO of Droga5 Sydney, said. “It’s a massive business, it’s a global piece of business and will be run out of the Sydney office.”

“It was also a pitch against one of the best agencies in the world, Wieden+Kennedy and to beat my old alumnus is always a good thing to do.”

As part of the account win, Droga5 has been tasked with a complete brand refresh that has seen the agency tweak the logo and create a new global campaign focused around ‘uncaging’ the heroes in today’s world.

“The thought around the campaign is ‘uncaged’ but it’s much more than just an advertising campaign,” Gohil said.

“It’s a platform. It’s really very much about having a genuine conversation with Asian drinkers. It’s the biggest beer in Asia. We’ve had to be very respectful of what already existed around it.

“It’s an invitation for young Asian beer drinkers to break free of some of the shackles that often hold people back in Asia. The idea that we’re held back by conformity expectations and stuff like that is just as true in western society as it is in Asian society. It’s just perhaps more prevalent in some of the key Asian markets.

“Ultimately [‘uncaged’] will progress so that the conversation will extend into the world. It’s a big, ambitious thought which will be across a whole range of different media outlets from traditional advertising spaces right the way through to digital and other areas.”

The new campaign features short films on the real stories behind some of Asia’s young personalities with the aim of speaking to young adults and inspire them to reach their full potential.

Below are the one minute spots featuring the ‘uncage’ stories of Anthony Chen and Joey Peng.

While all the creative and strategy for the Asian beer brand will be coming out of the Sydney office, Droga5 have appointed Simon Lockyer as a regional director who will be based in Singapore in a partner company’s office.

“The plan at the moment is all the creative and strategy we run is overseen by the Sydney office,” Gohil said.

“Which means that because of the volume of work that’s coming out, we’re also pushing further into Singapore where the client is actually based.”

The agency’s latest win of Tiger Beer is worth more than some of the recent losses the agency has faced, according to Gohil.

Without revealing the actual monetary value of the account win, Gohil said it was worth “more than what was lost over recent months”.

Rumours had circulated about the agency nabbing the Singapore beer brand, however Droga5 have managed to keep the account win relatively quiet from prying media eyes, working on it since October.

“The interesting thing for us is that we’ve been working on this for quite a few months and obviously we haven’t been able to talk about any of it,” Gohil said.

“Often there has been little blips people have wanted to write about, things that have been going on at Droga5. But we haven’t actually been able to uncover all the great stuff that’s been going on and this is one of the big news stories.”

Droga5 has had a bit of a rough trot in the past few months, having lost the Sunbeam account to Sydney-based independent agency The Works and being dropped as lead agency for the giant Woolworths account in March in favour of Leo Burnett.

“We’ve talked enough about businesses,” Gohil said. “We’ve parted ways with it and that’s all old news now.”

Ultimately, ‘Tiger Uncage’ is bigger than a campaign, with the current round of work already launching.

“We’re already working beyond [it] and where the campaign can go to, other markets and other executions,” Gohil added.

“The work itself around Tiger is phenomenal and it’s been really well received globally in the different markets it’s going to be running.”

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