Why the consumption occasion is changing how brand owners do business - Comment

Whether it’s communication technology, cleaning products or clothing, no FMCG category in the world exists in isolation. How these sectors operate, and the dominant trends within them, are inseparably connected to politics, culture and social mood.

Industries both shape and are shaped by these seemingly extraneous factors.

This theory can be applied to beverage alcohol: politics determines the types of drinks we can access, how we can access them, and how much we pay for them. Culture dictates how we drink and the ways in which we view or display our drinks choices. Social mood, meanwhile, determines how much we drink, where we drink, and who drinks what. These determinants have shifted massively over alcohol’s centuries-old history, and how the industry looks today couldn’t have been foreseen even ten years ago.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of being a drinks journalist is the sheer scale and complexity of these interconnections. The biggest and most meaningful stories usually have one or more of these three factors at their heart, and it’s fascinating to observe an industry – one brimming with so much history and social significance – adapt in this fast-moving modern world.

In my recent consideration of the aperitif category, I talk about the zeitgeist – something of an obscure phenomenon, but one that largely groups politics, culture and social mood into a single mass consciousness. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, ‘zeitgeist’ refers to “a particular set of ideas, beliefs, feelings etc., that is typical of a particular period in history”.

Throughout history, the zeitgeist has had a profound impact on what, where, how and even why we drink. Take the gin craze in the first half of the 18th Century, when spirit distilled from grain replaced French brandy following the accession of William of Orange, leading to mass social upheaval and a public health emergency. Or Prohibition in the US in the 1920s and ’30s and the litany of speakeasies that sprung up; or the suburban cocktail culture of the 1950s and ’60s, when the nuclear family typified the American dream; or the 1990s’ alcopop craze that served as many Millennials’ introduction to alcohol.

Today, as the health & wellness mantra continues to echo through society, and as drinking facilitates social interaction in an even deeper way, aperitifs have become the beverage du jour. In our post-pandemic society, there is a new appreciation for drinks that bring people together, allowing them to converse and let loose in a celebratory, yet restrained, manner.

As social and entertainment media glamourise the notion of work-life balance, aperitifs have become symbols of aspiration. Whether rightly or wrongly, they signify that the drinker is doing life ‘the right way’ – they’re working hard, but not so hard that they can’t clock off at a reasonable hour; they’re also taking time to relax and socialise, but in a moderate way.

All of this has had a significant impact on how beverage alcohol brand owners do business – not only relating to the types of products they sell and how they market them, but also to how they structure their companies and measure success.

Pernod Ricard was an early mover in doing this. In 2015, around the time Alex Ricard became CEO, the group started to implement a more consumer-centric – as opposed to category-centric – model based around ‘moments of consumption’. As part of this approach, Pernod Ricard aims to have at least one of its brands at the heart of any moment of social celebration – an aim embodied in the firm’s corporate tagline: créateurs de convivialité.

This approach has gradually spread across the industry at large, reflecting both how consumers shop and drink, and the nature of the products themselves. Increasingly, beverages cannot be easily pigeonholed – take no- & low-alcohol iterations, CBD drinks, RTDs branded with both soft and alcoholic logos, and many other category crossovers.

Aperitifs perfectly encapsulate this new sense of borderless categories in drinks. With many different products and cocktails identifying as aperitifs, the style is hard to define. But, according to one interviewee, consumers are more concerned with the aperitif “moment” than with product “technicalities”.

Will this philosophy reverberate even more across the wider industry? As the growing prevalence of cross-category products – and consumer focus on occasion – continues to rise, it would seem likely.