In good spirits: Beam Suntory’s agile work and research sharing

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If you’ve ever enjoyed sipping on a Courvoisier or a 10-year-old Laphroaig whisky, then you are already familiar with the brand portfolio of multinational Beam Suntory. The company employs almost 5,000 people globally and produces an extensive portfolio of well-known spirit brands.

International insight director Paul Thomas and David Baxter, insights director for the company’s Scotch, Irish and gin brand house, only joined the firm at the end of last year but are already industry stalwarts. Thomas was a director at The Forge and global director at Asahi International prior to that, as well as having worked client-side at drinks multinational Diageo and chocolate manufacturer Ferrero. Baxter, meanwhile, can lay claim to a 12-year stint at Ipsos and was previously global head of consumer insight at Glasgow-based spirits company Edrington.

Turning first to how Beam Suntory successfully managed to weather the pandemic, Thomas notes that one of the key trends in the alcohol sector was premiumisation and the concept of ‘accessible luxuries’. “In fact, the pandemic amplified that because a lot of people realised they needed to look after their health but still wanted to treat themselves, so they sought out premium spirit brands for that reason.”

Baxter adds that the crisis affected different brands in different ways, depending on whether they derived significant revenue from on-trade [on-premise consumption in bars and restaurants] or off-trade [retail outlets that sell spirits for off-premise consumption, such as supermarkets and off-licences] activity.

“If you were more, say, on-trade focused, or if you were maybe an emerging brand, then what you lost was not only people going out, but the touch point. That had a huge impact on markets like Spain, which is one of the biggest on-trade markets in the world, as well as Asia where it’s not traditional to consume alcohol at home; people usually go out to eat and drink with their friends.”

Well-known brands were able to manage the challenges by being in close proximity to the point of purchase across a wide range of channels. The most iconic brands tended to come out on top because another consequence of Covid-19 was that consumers had less time to shop at the supermarket because of social distancing regulations, meaning they gravitated towards their preferred products.

“You picked out [a bottle of gin] that you knew you liked as familiar favourites came to the fore, which is why we managed to keep at a reasonable level across the whole business, thanks to our mix of markets,” notes Baxter.

In terms of how the market research division at Beam Suntory is structured, Thomas explains that the senior insight leadership team is split into three areas. “First, we have people responsible for brand houses. That involves looking after specific categories and the brands within them and working on the insights around positioning communications and market opportunities.

“Then you have three regions: North America, Asia and international. The final piece is the technical aspect, like a sort of centre of excellence, which revolves around futures and methodology, as well as data and analytics.”

He elaborates on the benefits of such a structure. “The global insights team reports into Jing Mertoglu [vice-president of insights and analytics] and she in turn reports into Jessica Spence, who is president of brands. While we have a clear understanding of how the brand team should work, my key stakeholders are the managing and marketing directors of the brand houses.”

Baxter picks up the theme: “The brand houses partner closely with those markets that are really going to drive the success of the brand in the short to medium term. We report into insights in order to ensure we keep best practice, so we are all connected. What we then do is work closely with the regional teams along those lines.”

Beam Suntory has made significant strides in its insights journey in recent years, explains Thomas. “We are in that process of transforming insights from a service into a driving force. I think the tools are being built – I say ‘tools’ loosely, I mean, processes, principles, philosophies – in such a way as to make sure that insights works hand in hand with the brand and marketing teams, and sometimes the commercial and finance teams too, when it comes to decision-making.

“A lot of the information that we provide feeds into how our senior management is rolling out the brand-building philosophy within the business… to discover how to develop great positioning and drivers of growth, as well as how you step over [any] barriers.”

Drilling down into how the research function works at Beam Suntory, Thomas enthusiastically describes another recent innovation. “We’ve now set up what we call our insights distillery, which is like a repository for all of our research insight documents.

“What it means is if I’m sitting in France, not only can I find out if there’s ever been any specific research for that country, but I can use this tool to discover that we might have done something similar in Spain, so I can take some learnings from it. As an organisation we are trying to reduce spend on new research and increase spend on having people with the brains to leverage what already exists.”

“It’s all about the democratisation of knowledge,” agrees Baxter. “It effectively puts paid to the ‘can you just’ requests, as in ‘Can you just pull that report for me?’ With our new system, you have the ability to find it yourself.”

In an example of using local market knowledge and funnelling that into overall insights, the company has conducted research into moderation and the potential for beverages with low or no-alcohol aligned with consumption patterns.

“This is something that is entirely 100% insight-based, working with insights from four quite different countries, a mixture of ad hoc and desk research, all of those things are needed to start to build a global strategy. The fact that insights is driving that kind of strategy just shows how important it is and how taken up it’s been,” Thomas says.

Driven by competitor analysis that shows a number of manufacturers are claiming that as much as 20% of their brand portfolio will be low or even no-alcohol by 2023, the insights team started by debunking some of the myths around this type of drink.

“Many consumers are looking for low and no-alcohol options for occasions when they want to moderate their consumption. You might think it’s all Shoreditch-based trendy millennials and their quinoa, but actually pretty much every alcohol drinker has at least one occasion when they need to moderate,” points out Thomas.

Another focus is exploring how premium products work within the world now, says Baxter. “It’s evolving from the traditional, very status-driven, old-school-badge mentality to indulgence and little luxuries.

“One of the things that’s most interesting about the alcohol industry – and particularly Scotch whisky – is that you can only sell what you decided to make 12, 15 or 18 years ago, so it’s about maximising the opportunity to present that to the world. These are incredibly important communities, the investment that goes into them is enormous, you have people with a huge passion for collection, the same way they would do with artwork, cars or watches, so it’s about showcasing that legacy.”

Embracing agility

In terms of the challenges that lie ahead, Thomas identifies agile working as the way forward. “I think one of the big things that I’ve observed, particularly in my regions, is that there is an overreliance on old-school, old-fashioned methodology and suppliers. There is a time and place for that, but in a lot of my markets and for a lot of the brands, there’s simply not the resources or the budget [to operate in this way].”

He continues: “I’m currently leading a project to establish an agile, more self-serve type of research to reach consumers strategically. I may not always need to do a piece of work across 10 markets, but I might want to give a couple of those markets the ability to do a lighter version of that research for themselves. So that’s one of the big challenges: how we can move away from a heavy, stodgy approach towards embracing agility.

“I think it’s also reflective of the way that insights as an internal function is going more generally, which is that David and I are not researchers. We are not there just to run projects, although that is part of the job; we are primarily there to be consultants to our key stakeholders and use our knowledge and experience to influence change within the business.”

Baxter points to how they work with a range of players in the market, “from big research houses to consultative partners and field-based learning providers”. He maintains it’s important not to “put all our eggs in one basket in that respect. Each of these [agencies] is different and there’s still space for all of them. They all provide something that you can integrate into the decision-making process, whether that’s campaign analysis, social listening, web analytics, or the like.”

Thomas chimes in with his own takeaway after 20 years in the business: “Don’t try and use one agency to do everything. If you’re doing something around semiotics or cultural enrichment, then use an agency that specialises in it. I don’t believe in the jack-of-all-trades approach; I think you’re better off having a roster of smaller partners than you are using one or two to cover all bases.”

There’s something “quite special” about Beam Suntory’s ethos, according to Thomas. “We’re all trying to help each other to get the best result and the ethos is one of sharing collaboration.”

He concludes wryly: “The HR team will thank me for that, but it’s actually quite genuine.”

This article was first published in the October 2022 issue of Impact.