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The shift for alcohol, beer and wine marketers has been unprecedented. As restaurants and bars shut down or scale back, on-premise sales suffer.
To what extent can an uptick in off-premise sales close the gap?
I recently asked Diageo North America chief marketing and innovation officer Edward Pilkington to share his strategic perspective.
Paul Talbot: What are you asking your marketing teams to focus on right now?
Edward Pilkington: We are asking our teams to make sure they are absolutely on top of the current trends and rapidly changing consumer dynamics, and what the implications are for our business.
Specifically, that means they are considering things like:
- More in-home consumption and the need for fun and genuine good times at home.
- The rise in in-home ‘hobbies and skills’ such as home mixology.
- An increase in spending on ‘luxury’ brands over $100.
- Growth in e-commerce and delivery in general.
- More appetite for convenience and brands offered in convenient formats, such as cans which are booming right now.
All the while they still need to keep focus on the ‘essentials and basics of marketing.’ By this I mean knowing your consumer and making sure our brands are visible to them, in terms of targeted media and how we show up in-store, online and across the shopper journey.
In addition, they are focused on ensuring our brands are conveying the right messaging - messaging that’s relevant for, and authentic to, these times and also of course right for that brand.
Talbot: You lead the marketing for a diverse portfolio of 200 brands… have any of these brands posed particularly noteworthy challenges since the onset of the pandemic?
Pilkington: Essentially ‘hot brands’ and ‘hot categories’ have done well since the onset of the pandemic. As such we’ve seen tequila and North American whiskey continue to grow, and our brands in those categories are performing very well.
Our biggest challenges have been making sure that we keep the brands performing in categories that are a bit less dynamic. Vodka remains the largest spirit category but hasn’t necessarily been showing the same growth as tequila or North American whiskey. We put programs in place across our portfolio of vodka brands to make sure they were visible and that they were running impactful and relevant content.
This has paid off, with Ketel One for example.
Talbot: Most of us are familiar with the shift from on-premise to off-premise spirits consumption, but when we examine the implications from a marketing perspective, what do we see?
Pilkington: Well, as we saw the on-premise shutting down, we immediately began efforts to ensure we contributed to support the sector that’s always been there for us.
That’s been reflected in donations to groups like the U.S. Bartenders’ Guild Emergency Assistance Fund, the Restaurant Workers’ Community Fund, Southern Smoke Emergency Relief Fund and others.
We also quickly kicked off brand programs to support the on-premise – notably the Crown Royal Landmarks campaign supporting live music venues, the Bulleit Frontier Fund supporting bartenders, Don Julio supporting restaurant workers with its ‘1942 Day’ program and ongoing support like Ketel One’s ‘Marvelous Monday’ meals for bartenders.
Then we also really needed to focus on at-home consumption, so we ensured that we tapped into the rising interest in cocktail making at home. We accomplished that through drinks content across our brands, and the portfolio-wide ‘Tips from Home’ campaign which also supported bartenders.
We wanted to make sure it was easy for adult consumers to get our brands at home, so we dialed up our efforts in e-commerce, and partnered with brands like Cocktail Courier, Sourced and Food 52, who have helped deliver our brands as part of cocktails and drink kits.
We have also worked with delivery services, notably to support the on-premise folks who were able to offer ‘cocktails to go.’
And of course we’ve worked to make sure our media is as targeted and effective as it can be with more people at home, on their cell phones and watching TV and streaming services.
Talbot: Any other insights on Diageo North America’s marketing strategies you’d like to share?
Pilkington: I would classify this as more of a behavior than a strategy, but we have all embraced the need to both pivot, adapt and quickly change plans, while also looking ahead to forecast, anticipate, and then plan for what’s on the horizon. I think that’s something that will stay with us as we move into 2021 and beyond.
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December 15, 2020 at 12:15AM
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Inside Diageo North America’s Marketing Strategy - Forbes
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