Liqueurs need to be ‘flexible’ in global ambitions

Appealing to divergent markets around the world is a difficult trick to master, especially for brands insistent on sticking to one “signature” serve, as Richard Woodard discovers.

Gruppo Campari’s Aperol is one of the big success stories in the liqueurs category

What makes a spirits brand “global”? It’s all too easy to assign the adjective blithely to products such as Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff or Bacardi without thinking about what it really means. According to Tim Dewey, global marketing director and UK commercial director at Drambuie (since acquired by William Grant & Sons), many so- called “global” brands typically source 75% of their sales from five key markets. So, when we describe a brand as “global”, what we really mean is one which has a strong position in a basket of countries, thus spreading the risk and shielding itself from regional downturns.

In liqueurs, Aperol is one of the great international success stories of the recent past. The Gruppo Campari-owned brand’s trademark Spritz serve accounts for 90% of its consumption and is a fixture in bars across central Europe. However, half its sales still stem from its Italian homeland. Global? Not yet.

Nonetheless, Aperol is seen by many as an object lesson in taking a local speciality – in this case, an aperitif first produced in Padua nearly a century ago – and turning it into an international phenomenon. Aperol now has a sponsorship deal with Manchester United, an escalating presence in Western and Eastern Europe, and a foothold in the huge US market via its Aperol Brunch Society campaign and its own distribution presence.

Worldwide ambitions

Sales were static at 2.4m cases in 2013, but that’s a slightly misleading statistic engineered by the brand’s delisting by Lidl in Germany (it’s been back on the shelves there for some time now, and sales have risen again as a result).

Aperol’s globalisation strategy is still very much work in progress, but there’s one local speciality which has done an even better job of transcending its local roots: at 7.15 million cases in 2013, kräuterlikör Jägermeister leaves everyone else – Baileys included – trailing in its wake.

At first glance, you might think that the Mast-Jägermeister-owned brand pursues a similar strategic vein to Aperol – for the Spritz, read frozen shots and Jäger-bombs – but it’s not quite that simple, according to Michael Eichel, the company’s director of corporate communications.

“It is worth having one signature drink globally, but… this is very dependent on local culture and consumer behaviour,” he says. “Our signature drink is the ice-cold shot — this is the focus point of our global drink strategy.

“However, in traditional markets we are also known as a herbal liqueur and offer Jägermeister as a digestif in a long drink, beside the ice-cold shot. Actually, sometimes you have to adapt your strategy to local needs in order to be successful.”

Drambuie Scotch whisky liqueur adapts its serves for different markets around the world

Singular serve

The lure of the “mono-serve” Aperol model is obvious – it gives focus and economies of scale, as Drambuie’s Dewey puts it – but in a world where regional variations persist, this tactic isn’t necessarily realistic. “Our approach is to offer markets a very clear drinks strategy framework and work with them to focus and choose within it,” Dewey explains.

“This means that a market like the US can take advantage of the resurgence in brown spirits and classic cocktails to focus on the Rusty Nail, whereas it is not forced on a market such as Brazil, where consumers are less responsive to our signature serve and we have had strong success with the Drambuie Caipirinha.

“Similarly,” he continues, “we have had great success in the UK with our Hot Apple Toddy, which would be inappropriate for warmer climates.”

Adaptable spirit

It’s a similar story at Rémy Cointreau- owned Metaxa. “When it comes to specific markets, to specific channels or even to specific seasons, out of this large palette of possibilities we tend to concentrate our energies behind a specific drink,” says international brand manager for Metaxa Huity Konstantinidou.

“Obviously, it makes better sense to introduce Metaxa as a Metaxa Suntonic in the middle of the summer, rather than proposing it neat. If ginger ale is unknown in some markets, it makes no sense to showcase Metaxa Ginger. We are pragmatic people,” says Konstantinidou.

One area where you might expect to see some consistency of demand is within range liqueurs. Surely the picture here is the same in any country where there is an established or emerging cocktail culture? Well, not exactly. Wenneker, for instance, has a portfolio of some 42 different flavours, under constant review so that the company can tap into new trends, such as melon (rising fast, especially in Italy) and ginger.

The trick is to distinguish fad from genuine trend. “You sometimes get people saying they’d like a liquorice liqueur or something, but unless it’s going to be selling somewhere else, then it’s highly unlikely that we’ll do it,” explains Richard Ridley, Wenneker export director.

That said, Wenneker’s core range of 8-10 variants is fairly constant to all markets – think triple sec, blue curaçao and so on – so the local variations lie in the company’s long tail of products. “There are slight modifications,” says Ridley. “For instance, Gold Liqueur is 50% abv in a few markets, but 20% more typically.” Servicing this demand is trickier than you might think – rather than just adding a bit more/less water to the mix, the whole recipe needs to be reformulated, road- tested and cleared before launch.

Jagermeister, which promotes the ice cold shot serve, adapts its image to appeal to different trends

Appeal to the on-trade

Similarly, De Kuyper generally develops new liqueurs with the aid of a group of international bartenders, working out the potential usage of the product and how this should impact its formulation. “For the introduction, we choose a target market,” says Albert De Heer, marketing director, global brands, at De Kuyper. “We do not do a global roll-out. If it is a proven success in one country, we roll it out in the rest of the world when we see demand.”

Then there’s the dead hand of bureaucracy. Emerging markets such as China, Korea and Turkey might look attractive but, reports Wenneker’s Ridley, they (along with Belarus and Cyprus, among plenty of others) have “very stringent” rules on ingredients.

“There are certain types of e-numbers and colourants that they don’t like,” Ridley explains. “You have to go through a modification process to get into China with a reasonable representation of your range — and it can stop you getting certain products into that market.”

If consumption trends and even product formulation can change from country to country, it’s much the same with the marketing mix. Eichel says Jägermeister is only too happy to listen to local distribution partners, so that the brand is associated with alternative rock music in Spain, but has a more “chic and in vogue” image in other countries like Italy and Hungary.

Local interpretation

In much the same way, Drambuie’s A Taste of the Extraordinary campaign has a global strapline, but receives local interpretation through associations with areas such as music, for instance, but not sport (which is viewed as inappropriate). “We feel this gives markets enough structure and flexibility for us to benefit from economies of scale while adjusting to important differences in the market,” explains Dewey.

A global vision is all very well, then, but it can’t be too inflexible — brands need to give themselves the necessary wriggle room to adapt to different demands and customs around the world. Ironically, to achieve global stature you must first think local: identifying, acknowledging and exploiting the trends and appetites which characterise each individual market.