Global Drinks Intel: What do you do at Bacardi and how long have you been doing it for?
Brenda Fiala, VP of strategy, insights & data analytics at Bacardi: I lead the strategic insights & analytics team, which is based around the world and is embedded both in Bacardi’s brand and regional teams. We have a small group we call ‘future forces of growth’ that looks to create foresight across the industry. I’ve also got a team that looks at marketing performance – how effectively and efficiently we’re delivering our advertising and promotion.
I’ve just started my eighth year with the company.
GDI: What are your KPIs?
BF: They’re all focused on Bacardi’s business objectives and what we call our ‘Best Ten’ strategy, at the heart of which is the consumer. Our annual cocktails report is the public-facing view.
Then, we have our competitor insights that get built into our brands, our markets and our commercial teams, so that they’re delivering competitively. The KPI that I’m proud of right now is, in many of our key brand/market combinations, we’ve gained share, even as the industry in general has contracted.
GDI: Pandemic notwithstanding, consumer trends tend to move quite slowly. Has anything ever come out of left field?
BF: One trend that came really strongly out of the pandemic has been the rising demand for drinks that are more natural – more people spent more time outside, even if it was just in their back gardens or local parks. People have definitely been looking to show their reconnection to the outside in their drinks and cocktails.
GDI: Which trends are still hanging around that offer a strong opportunity for the likes of Bacardi?
BF: There‘s an increasing number of consumers who are interested in drinking no-spirit cocktails, but they still want a sophisticated drink. Most of the non-alc spirits are absolutely undrinkable. I’m afraid that it’s going to get killed by players who have created undrinkable spirits before it properly takes off.
With Martini Vibrante and Floreale, we ran a consumer taste test of every category of non-alc spirit that we could get our hands on. Even in a blind taste test, the Martini products came out on top. People really want a great-tasting drink from an authentic brand.
No-alcohol spirits might not take off like tequila and be the next US$1bn thing, but it’s likely to be around for a very long time – there will always be people who want something to drink when they’re not drinking.
GDI: Don’t consumers tell you one thing and do another?
BF: That’s why we put insights and analytics together. It’s about hearing the qualitative – what people say – and looking at the numbers – what they actually drink. You can look there for any saying/doing gap that might be occurring.
I’m an eternal optimist, but I’m also a realist – you have to see life as it is. There are people who sometimes say things because they feel like it’s the right thing to say. But, you can see it borne out by the numbers. People are cynical but when there’s a real story to believe in, then they’re all in.
GDI: Bacardi’s annual Cocktails Trend Report has become something of an industry fixture. Which consumer trend do you think will catch us all by surprise in 2024?
BF: One that’s taking shape that has surprised me is that going out is being seen as a participatory experience. When people go out, they’re spending and they want a really great cocktail. That’s backed up by the increased interest we’re seeing in modern variations of champagne cocktails. Even in these economic times, people are willing to pay for amazing experiences.
At the other end of the scale, another trend is that people want a really great spirit, either neat or with a single mixer. When we asked consumers what their top cocktails for 2024 were going to be, Gin & Tonic led the list. The industry’s been saying for a while that the gin boom’s over. Nobody told the consumer!
Sometimes when they go out, they’re looking for simple, mixed drinks with a good spirit. So, the rise of the mixed drink has surprised me a little bit.
GDI: In your research for this year’s report, was there anything that had you running to Bacardi’s boardroom?
BF: In our bartender survey, which we also do every year, they said that mezcal is on the rise. People are really starting to drink more challenging drinks. But, we’re calling that one right with Ilegal mezcal, which we bought in September. So, I’d go into the boardroom and say we’re hitting that trend at the right point.
GDI: I don’t expect you’re considered by the company as being the bearer of bad news.
BF: Oh, I’ve been there!
GDI: How big a part does the macroeconomic situation play in the trends that you expect for this year?
BF: I think everybody’s still feeling it. One aspect of that, though, is when consumers are going to spend, then they’re going to spend. We see that in ‘escapism elixirs’ – people want to transport themselves across destinations and countries, and when they go on holiday they want to drink things that are sometimes surprising, and sometimes familiar.
We’re also seeing the return of the piña colada. I’m starting to wonder if ‘tiki’ drinks are going to come back. They just left, but people love these rum-based cocktails, and we’re seeing glimmers of that in the data.
GDI: So much of the research we see breaks consumers down by age bracket. Is that too clean-cut?
BF: Yes! In my second week at Bacardi, I stood up at a leadership team meeting and told them to forget demographics; it’s about psychographics. You look at two people of the same age, supposedly of the same generation, but they have wildly different values.
We have proprietary consumer segmentation based on people’s psychographics that’s been remarkably resilient all the way through Covid. People aren’t in a box. It’s not about who you are at work and it’s not necessarily who you are at home – It’s how you want to feel and what you want to portray when you’re socialising.
That’s allowed our brands to connect with consumers and create shared values. We call brand Bacardi’s consumers ‘the Exuberants’ – when they go out, they want to feel liberated. They’re the life of the party. We call D’Ussé [cognac] consumers ‘the Provocateurs’ – There’s a little twist in them.
You can’t judge a person by their looks. We’ve got it down to a very simple tool that’s been a wonderful way to pull people together internally when we share who people are on the inside and create that sense of belonging and diversity; not based on age or education or where you come from, but what you value and how you want to feel in those moments that matter.
GDI: Which consumer trend did you nail correctly?
BF: The one I’m really proud of is our ageing and blending innovation. One of the things we’ve seen from consumers is they love smooth whisky/whiskey, but many find the category to be old fashioned, so are looking for something new that they can enter into without making a lot of mistakes.
We worked with the production team at Dewar’s, led by master blender Stephanie Mcleod, to come up with Double Double – a quadruple aged whisky. With all of the cask finishes that we’ve done – the French Smooth, the Portuguese Smooth, the Caribbean Smooth – the consumer gets these different flavours from different destinations. It’s been wonderful to see the recruitment of new whisky drinkers into the Dewar’s Cask Series.
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