Asahi Extra Cold instant beer cooler campaign

I know where I’m going for drinks later! Perfect for the summer, Asahi is promoting its Super Dry beer with its own concept bar in Ginza.

The bar takes Asahi’s popular beverage and lets you pour yourself a generous glass. That’s not all — what comes out of the tap is Super Dry at minus 2 degrees Celcius (28.4 Fahrenheit). Perfect for getting cool in the humid Japanese summer.

Asahi is, like other drinks manufacturers, fighting hard to maintain its position in the market. With a declining and aging population, the number of drinkers is getting more and more limited: in fact Super Dry last year fell from holding the top share in the market down to being runner-up to rival Kirin.

When it was launched in the Eighties Super Dry was popular with men in their thirties; now those people are in their fifties and the market is shrinking. Consumption of the drink peaked ten years ago but since then has dropped forty per cent.

Asahi formed a special Super Dry marketing team to push the drink to consumers in their twenties and to change the public image of the beer as a “Dad’s drink”. How could they make the same product seem more appealing? Cue TV commercials with hunks like Hugh Jackman and Masaharu Fukuyama (of Ryomaden fame).

They also came up with the Extra Cold, a hi-tech cooler to keep your Super Dry at home chilled below zero. You can apply to get one by collecting seals on Super Dry cans (48 seals, so get drinking!).

The Extra Cold bar opened in May and was conceived as a “party bar” ideal for younger consumers. They can engage in a fun way with the beer-pouring process, while the “authenticity” of the theme and concept is reinforced by having the outside temperature displayed on the walls of the bar in real time — just so you know how cool your throat is getting!

Apparently more than ten thousand drinkers have descended on the bar so far for a refreshing beer, or two. But if you want to join the party you’ll have to hurry: the bar is a summer-only place, open till August 31.

We only wish they would bring back their beer-pouring robot!