A brewing challenge

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This is Paul Thomas’s first day back in Asahi Europe’s Woking head office post-honeymoon and, unsurprisingly, he appears sun-kissed and relaxed. Once we settle down to chat, however, there’s no doubt his mind is fully focused on the many business opportunities that enticed him to join the brewing group as global head of insight in May 2018.

Thomas was approached for the role after three years at drinks giant Diageo, where he held insight and innovation roles. There, he brought a new variant of Tanqueray gin to market – Flor de Sevilla – which has the bitter-sweet flavour of Seville oranges. But what of the challenges facing Asahi?

‘Challenges’ is the operative word because, although placed among the world’s top 10 brewing groups, Asahi is dwarfed by beer behemoths such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken, Carlsberg and Molson Coors.

“We are absolutely a challenger brand,” says Thomas, “and we have set some pretty lofty ambitions about becoming what we call a ‘global premium beer powerhouse’. We are very selective in choosing where we play and we are focused on becoming a really strong No 1 or No 2 player in all the premium beer segments.”

These ambitions come on the back of a massive amount of change for Asahi over the past couple of years. In October 2016, it completed the acquisition of Miller Brands UK, bringing premium beer brands Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Grolsch and Meantime into the fold. Then, at the start of this year, the company announced the relaunch of its eponymous Asahi Super Dry beer in its ‘authentic form’.

The beer had been brewed under contract by Shepherd Neame, Britain’s oldest brewer. With the backing of its parent company in Japan, however, Asahi took brewing of the brand back in-house, and switched to the original recipe and production processes renowned for delivering a uniquely dry, crisp taste most precisely described by the Japanese word karakuchi.



These changes allowed for the repositioning of Asahi Super Dry in Europe as a premium brand – and it is with this focus on premium beers that Asahi Europe differs from bigger rivals, as well as its parent in the Far East.

“At Asahi Europe, we are responsible for Asahi, Peroni, Grolsch, London Meantime and all the variants that sit under those, anywhere in the world where they are considered a premium brand,” says Thomas.

“As an example, Asahi in Asia is a mainstream brand, so that is looked after by the Tokyo office. Peroni Red – the biggest beer brand in Italy, I believe – is a mainstream product, so, again, we don’t touch that. But where those four brands are premium, this is the headquarters.
“We have a very good working relationship with Japan and one of the reasons they decided to almost outsource the premiumisation of Asahi throughout the world is that they realised they had the opportunity to draw on the expertise of some of the people who’d worked towards making premium giants of Peroni and Grolsch.”

A “challenger mindset” is ingrained in the business and conveyed in major external presentations given to explain what the business stands for. That mindset is built on four pillars, the first three of which are: unleashing the right portfolio (working out which of the products is right for which market); executing everything to the highest possible degree; and employing the right people. The fourth pillar is insights.

“It’s quite rare for a big company to have insights within slide two of its company presentation,” says Thomas proudly. “We are very clear that having a superlative understanding of the consumer and the customer will lead to bigger and better ideas. If we just get in the same insights as, say, Heineken, they are going to win, because they have a lot more money to spend on ‘above the line’. We have to be smarter.”

That quest to be smarter led to the creation of global insights, which Thomas leads. The function sits within global marketing and one of its key roles is to ensure the ethos of consumer insight permeates across the business. Thomas wants to make Asahi’s marketers as curious about consumers as its insights team is.

Global insights is “deliberately lean”, at only three-strong, but there are around 20 more insights people in local teams prioritising the UK, the Netherlands and Italy. Not having the biggest team means wringing incremental value out of every person to achieve success. Historically, local teams were very self-contained. Among the tasks Thomas faces are building better networks between the teams and striking the right balance between local and global insight.

“The local teams have real local expertise and knowledge. They know which suppliers are great quality. We need to share knowledge. It’s not an us-and-them mentality, or a master-slave thing. It’s a partnership.”

Getting insight right matters because there are many tricky issues to address. Beer sales in Europe are in decline, with people drinking less overall and some switching to spirits, which have been given a lift by innovation in categories such as gin (which Thomas knows all about). The extent to which the on-trade is struggling was highlighted by the Campaign for Real Ale figures from August 2018, which showed that 18 pubs in Britain close every week.

Moreover, young people ( 18-24 years) have become the adult age bracket least likely to drink alcohol because of health consciousness, a squeeze on their disposable income and changing social habits. In the off-trade – which for a brand such as Peroni accounts for most UK sales – there is also predictable pressure from supermarkets for price promotion. Of course, Asahi runs special offers – but, to retain its premium positioning, not to the extent that retailers would prefer. Insight has a role to play in the fight against discounting and brand-value erosion.

Added to all this, there has been the rise of the microbrewery and a craft beer revolution in recent years. Isn’t this a calamity for Asahi? Quite the contrary, argues Thomas.



“The craft movement has been fantastic for beer. Craft has come along and re-engaged people’s interest in beer so it’s not just a commodity. There is far more connoisseurship and discernment now. That’s great if you’re where we are, but, frankly, it’s a massive risk if you’re a brand that doesn’t have a story to tell. All our premium brands have great stories to tell.”

Thomas has coined what he calls the ‘four Ps’ of craft to illustrate what consumers relate to: process – how the beer is made; people – who makes it; provenance – origin, specific region; and product – the recipe, often down to where the water comes from.

As for the trend of falling alcohol consumption, Thomas believes the sector must get better at innovation. “There’s a wonderful opportunity to deliver products that have no alcohol but that have everything else alcohol brands offer: the ritual, the glassware, the sociability, the feeling of celebration, the taste complexity, that hint of bitterness you get in alcohol that you don’t find in sweet soft drinks. From a new product development (NPD) point of view, the alcohol industry has to get on it.”

Innovation, however, is only one of several areas in which global insight is involved. “We are multifaceted as an insight team – we don’t just do the data; we don’t just do the innovation. We do everything: from high-level strategic ideation right down to in-store executions; from developing a platform idea for advertising to testing and optimising that final copy; and from understanding the customer reality to more old-fashioned tracking sales performance.”

Asahi embraces the principle of zero-based budgeting, so every piece of research has to be justified. Thomas applauds this as a way of ensuring as much as possible is completed in-house and money is spent only on what’s truly necessary. Otherwise, he believes there is always the danger that the client-side insight function becomes little more than a project-management team.

Nevertheless, Asahi works with a broad gamut of agencies, using Kantar Millward Brown for tracking, Nielsen or IRI market by market for EPOS-type data, and Kantar Worldpanel where appropriate. There is more fluidity when it comes to ad hoc assignments, but the plan is to create a roster of agencies.

This brings us back to Thomas’s opinions on what clients really want from agencies.

Several months ago, in response to requests from agency partners for help in educating junior staff, Thomas posted an illuminating bullet-point list of tips on LinkedIn. It began: “Every client is different – some want detail, some want topline, some want daily updates, some want to be left alone! Take the trouble to find out.”

His post drew a big response from the sector. At the time of writing, it had sparked 386 likes and 77 comments.

“One of the most obvious things for me – that agencies don’t always get – is that there is not a generic carbon copy of a client. Everyone has their preferred style of working. Agencies don’t try to find out, which I don’t understand.”

As finding things out is what Thomas is all about, it’s small wonder such an oversight would not go down at all well.

Richer insight at half the price

Paul Thomas came to Asahi just as one of its global brands was being repositioned. There was a need to test and optimise its new positioning, as well as a large number of related executions for TV, out of home, press, digital, events and so on. This was challenging because the five markets involved – Argentina, Romania, Canada, France and the Netherlands – were diverse.

The proposal was to conduct standard, two-hour focus groups in each market, during which consumers would be taken through all the materials in one go. The projected total cost was £150,000.

Thomas had two concerns about approaching the research in this way. He felt focus-group participants would become “fatigued” by working through so much material in 120 minutes – and he baulked at the price. There had to be a better way.

“I worked with a different agency to come up with five online communities in those local markets,” says Thomas. “Over the course of a week and a half, you went back to them every day with a different piece of the puzzle. This allowed us to break it down, so we got better answers.”
Improved insight came in at £75,000 – half the original estimate.