025 | Starting from the Taste Profile: when liquids transcend categories and solve a customer's need. | Part 1/2 with Maurice Doyle, CEO of Compass Box Whisky (London, UK)

Welcome to the Maffeo Drinks Podcast. I am your host, Chris Maffeo. This is the first part of the chat with Maurice Doyle. He is the CEO of Compass Box Whiskey. He is a coach and brings three decades of industry experience, having held senior leadership roles at Bacardi, William Grant and Sons and Santori.

I hope you will enjoy our chat. Hi, Maurice, how are doing?

Hi, Chris, I'm doing really well. It's great to be with you.

Absolutely. And thanks thanks for your time. I know how how busy you are, so this is really a a gift from you. Let's talk about how to build brands from the bottom up together. So we met just this short intro.

We met in Clubhouse in the in the glory days of Clubhouse in

Glory days.

2021, I think it was. And since then, we've never met in person, but we had a lot of conversation, a lot of video chats.

I feel like we know each other very well, Chris. It's a pleasure. It's been

a pleasure. Tell people that I know you, like, when your name pops up, then it's like, oh, you know Morris? I was like, yeah. And and I I also feel like it yeah. We actually never met in person, but it's very funny how how we can build digital human So let's talk about you.

I mean, you've got a huge experience from so my question will not be necessarily about your current situation and, you know, your current setup, but about your philosophy of building brands and what you've seen working, what you've seen not working as well, the issues with the industry and and how to fix them. And one of my first things that I that I like to talk about is how brands create demand. I've been through a lot of meetings, and there's always this thing like, let's build brand awareness. And I'm a little bit allergic to the to that word in in that sense because it feels very ethereal to me. So what what's your take on building brand demand?

For me, Chris, it starts off with an understanding of what is the problem that you're trying to solve and for who. So even before you're kinda creating brand awareness, when you're thinking about creating your brand, it's just about being really clear about what the problem is, and who has it. And those problems don't necessarily have to be big as alcohol brands, we're not trying to create world peace, or cure world hunger. But there should be something that you've identified that it was a problem, and you believe that what you're offering the world can solve it. That is a starting point for me, because if you're not clear on what's that problem, and if you're not clear about what you're doing to solve it, then creating awareness by itself is never going to work because it's creating awareness of what.

And so I think you have to do that disciplined work to begin with. And people often ask me, well, do you do that? Do you look at an Excel spreadsheet? Or does that give you what the problem is? Honestly, it's just really getting out there and connecting with people, talking to people, talking to bar owners, people who work in in bars, talking to consumers, problem and marketing the drinks world is a blend of art and science.

And so it can be just a qualitative view that you have to begin with. But hopefully, once you've identified what the problem is, then if you you can check-in with people in terms of saying, we think there is this issue, and we think we can solve it in this way. So a good example, which I can claim no credit for, is I'm CEO of Compass Box. And when the founder, John Glaser, created Compass Box way back in the year 2000, the world of Scotch whisky was quite a traditional place, quite a conservative place with a small city, quite masculine, quite rules orientated. There's kind of two or three big players who really kind of controlled everything.

And then it wasn't a very dynamic, exciting category. It delivered for many people, but there was a group of people that were meriting the time that wanted more. And and so John identified that there was a problem that it wasn't interesting enough. There wasn't enough relevance there for these people who want to discover more about Scotch whiskey. So he identified that problem.

He identified the type. It's not a problem for everybody, but there's a small niche that have the problem. And so hit the mission that he created the brand, was to to fix that problem. The mission that we have today is still the mission that we had then, which was to inspire moments of joy by making the world of Scotch Whisky a more interesting place. So rather than it being a little bit bland, little bit conservative, a little bit rule based, let's let's be transparent, let's be dynamic, let's break some rules, let's do things differently.

So so I do think there is a really important step even before you get to brand awareness in terms of just being really clear what the problem is and for whom. And for whom people often forget because most brands shouldn't be for everybody. Most brands should be for a small group of people. It's better to really connect with a small group of people than to be vanilla for for everybody. And I think especially that small brands, spirit brands, beverage brands that are growing in the entree is to be really, really clear who your tribe is and and who's not.

And and I remember in the early days of Hendrix gin, we used to play off that because we used to say it's not for everybody. In fact, we put something on a path that that it is going to be for 1%, only 1% of gin drinkers. So

for most more handful of people, no?

Yes. For most gin drinkers, you you got some amazing brands that you're happy with, but there's some people out there that want more, And it's those people that we're targeting. And I think that's, that's really important to be very clear what the problem is. Be very clear in terms of who, who has a problem and who you're connecting with, and be very clear too, in terms of how you can solve the problem. And there has to be something different about what you're offering to what's already already out there.

Most of the things we do, it's not going to be something that's kind of life changing, but there needs to be something different. So in your when you're in a bar, and you're explaining why you should drink Morris Gin or Chris Fairuth, then there has to be something different about those brands from a product point of view or from an imagery point of view that's relevant. Because if you're just offering what's already out there, why is anybody going to change? Why is a bar owner going to stock your brand? Why is a consumer going to drink your brand?

So there has to be something different about what you do. And I think you need to have a philosophy about how you're going to do it. And that's about strategy. It's about choosing the things that you're going to do, and even more importantly, the things that you're not going to do.

Yes.

For me, strategy is all about the choices that you decide that you're gonna make, not going to do. And typically in the early days of a brand, you have very limited resources. So it's much, much better to do one or two things brilliantly and do them consistently well over time than trying to do too many things and do them very averagely. So for me, that's the beginning stages of how you create a brand even before you get to how you drive brand awareness. And I agree with you brand awareness by itself is nothing.

But that for me is always the first step when I when I look at creating interesting beverage brands. And I, by being significantly older than than you, I've learned about the things that I'm passionate about and the things I'm less passionate about. And there's two things I'm passionate about. One is about on people's side, growing people. But the other thing which I really love is taking, growing, turning either non existing brands or small brands into something that's got momentum and growing.

I really admire those people that manage kind of the huge brands and deliver kind of 1% gains every year. And a good year is a plus one and a bad year is minus one. I don't have the mentality. I find that not particularly exciting, but crafting something new and different. That's what I love.

That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Nice, nice. I think you really nailed it there on on the fact I remember, I used to hate gin. I mean, couldn't drink gin. I had a bit of any an issue on one night and one of those kind of categories that you say, no. That that Saturday night was the wrong night for gin.

And I I didn't drink it for, I don't know, I think, like ten years. And then a friend of mine came to visit me in Prague and she brought me a a gift and it was a bottle of Hendrix. I said, oh, that's cool. What's that? And she said, it's gin.

And I was like, oh, sorry. Like, I don't drink gin. And she was like, okay. That's for you then. Because this is the gene for non gin drinkers.

And the crazy thing was, I mean, was not in marketing. But she explained it to me like if she was working for the company. And and she said, look, let's go and I let you try this. Let's go and buy a cucumber. So we went to the corner shop.

We bought a cucumber. She made a gin and tonic for me. And I said like, but how you know, do people know about about this like that? It's supposed to be served with a cucumber. And she said like, you will be impressed.

So we then went for dinner. We went for a cocktail and we went to a couple of cocktail bars and they both two or three of them. They served it with cucumber. And I was shocked, literally. I mean, I was then back then was I was working in marketing for Peroni.

Since then I started drinking and then all of my friends, you know, I I used to tell exactly the same story, which was also very simple for me because it was on the back label and there was a small kind of like a neck hanger on that exactly saying like this is for a small handful of people and so on. And it got me thinking and then I also read the book by Stephen Grass, Brand Mysticism and you know I met you and I met a lot of people working for the company And it really inspired me, you know, because it's about niching down and really going into a small need for someone where you want to recruit people in the category. And I guess, I mean, I'm not very familiar with Compass Box from a brand perspective, but it feels like it's bringing people to the scotch category. You know, people that wouldn't consider scotch whiskey. This is how I see it from the outside.

You know, it's for for non regular Scotch drinkers.

It's true. It's it's true. And I think both Hendrix and Compass Box, I think, are really good examples of brands being built from the bottom up. I wasn't, there at the very early stages of creating Hendrix and as many other people that can that should be credited for that. It was a disruptor in the category, but a consistent disruptor.

At the time, every gin brand was kind of a London gin brand distilled in England in blue bottles or green bottles, drunk if you were very lucky with a slice of lime, mostly with a slice of lemon, all priced at a certain level. Meningenex comes in at least 50% higher than any other gin brand, in a dark bottle that hadn't been seen before in the world of gin. And then the whole idea of kind of insisting that it had to be with cucumbers, several cucumbers and consistently doing that was inspired. And then just doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. And, the brand was created just kind of before the turn of the millennium.

And it took probably ten years for people to really start noticing it. And what happened was we were telling a story, but the great thing is other people like your friends started telling a story for us. And alcohol is a social, it's a human category, high interest category people. If there's a brand that really resonates with them, they will be very keen to recommend it to their friends. And so once you can leverage that power of advocacy, as we talk in Come to Trade, then that's really, really powerful.

But I think the simplicity and the consistency of the message and being a disruptor, but being consistent in how you're disrupting the category was really important from a Hengex perspective. We had this, I don't know they have it still there, but we had this Lithmus test, on Hengex, was like the golden rule. If any of these other gin brands has done this type of activity before, we can't do it in Hengex. We have to do something different. So when we started developing the brand in airports, it was what can we do that's that's different?

So everybody was offering a gift pack with glasses, And there was a reason why people liked that, but we wanted to do it in a different way. And so we came up with these wonderful kind of teacups and tea sauces, which are full of this kind of Victoriana imagery, and they're very, very peculiar, but in a kind of joyful way. And then they became amazing collectibles. And that was something that we were doing that was just different. We had people dressed up in Victorian outfits and cycling around airports in penny farthing bicycles and doing some weird stuff that just got people talking about the brand.

Absolutely.

We were very consistent about that. So that's the magic of Hengex story, and all credit to the people who created it, those people that have been working on the brand since I left.

And it's still a benchmark for many competitors. And you're right when you said it took ten years because that was exactly 2010 when I heard that story. And that's another of this important points about, you know, there's no such thing as an overnight success because people think like, okay, they launched this brand, you know, no matter if it's Hendrix or another one, but it's just like you tend to think it was okay, like a couple of years ago. I mean, the Aperol, the Campari, like all these brands are, you know, taking ages to to actually develop and get mainstream because they may be super strong in a handful of markets and but not everywhere. And then some other countries are lagging behind into the the development of the brand.

Usually there's there's always like this kind of like handful of markets that are making the difference and they make what like eighty, eighty five, 90% of the sales initially. But that's how how that goes. Building on that you were you were mentioning earlier consumers now. And let's say my take on consumer because when when whenever I'm in meetings and and they talk about, oh, this is our target consumer and the target persona and and so on. In the past, there was a tendency to to cluster them by whatever, like male, female, whatever, 20 to 40, a b plus one, blah blah blah, and and and so on living in cities, urbanites, and so forth.

No? And I also got a little bit allergic to that one because for me, it's more about people with a certain needs because I always give the example. I mean, you can see me at the at the embassy of Italy here in Czech Republic, and I'm wearing a suit and I'm and I'm drinking francesca gorta or prosecco or champagne. And then you see me the day after in a pub with a T shirt and shorts and and having five beers and a and a sausage. And it's still the same consumer.

So it depends on the on the occasion that I'm in and I may or sometimes I may want to. I mean, I'm in a groin type of person. But then if I'm out with my with my wife and she drinks Spritz, I may go for a Spritz with her. You know, I don't want to have any Groni while she's having a Spritz, for example. So I become a Spritz type of person, which I'm usually not.

So when you talk about consumers and how to understand consumers, what is your take and how do you explain that to to your team and to people?

I also have the same kind of visceral reaction when I see a brand's target consumer described in demographic terms because it's ridiculous. And even more when people say they're targeting like millennials in terms of the broad categories. Gen Z. It's absolutely ridiculous. A 25 year old male could still be a student, could be married with three children.

It's such a poor way of targeting consumers. And what's much more relevant for me is the attitude and a more kind of psychographic way of looking at consumers. So what is it that people are looking for? So we describe our target in terms of modern Scotch appreciators, and they can be men and women. They can be younger.

They can be older. All over legally drinking age, of course. But it's not about demographics. It absolutely isn't about demographics. It's about having that attitude.

Then you're right in terms of then the occasion can make a make a big difference. I drink Guinness in a in bars, in a couple of locations, mostly when I'm back home in Ireland, and mostly with a certain group of friends. And yet it's a brand where where I'd only drink it in that that occasion. And so my attitude is still the same to brands and and to Guinness. I'm very positive towards Guinness, but it's it's the occasion, these friends, this particular these particular partners, and my default is like a default trigger.

When I'm there, I almost don't consider anything else. It's just that's what I drink. And so I think using the combination of attitude and occasion is much more relevant than than demographics. Marketers can often think about kind of consumers, but their people, Think of them as people and connect with them as people speak to them as as people. Don't look at reports.

If your understanding of your target market comes from reading reports, then you've failed. You have to get out there. I have this, this expression which I probably overuse, Chris, which is that nothing magical ever, ever happens from behind the desk.

I remember that.

And so it's really important to get out there and connect in the real world, whether you're in commercial, you have to do that in terms of building relationships, whether you're marketing, you have to do that. And sometimes people think it's well, am I being demeaning to people who are just doing it, who are doing a desk job and it's not that at all. I've done jobs which are primarily kind of desk jobs, but the magic happens often when you're connecting with somebody by a coffee machine or when you're out in a bar yourself and you don't have to be marketing, you're speaking to somebody, speaking to a bar owner, and you get this amazing insight about something which is happening, a trend that's beginning to happen. That's those are the magical moments that can really make a difference. And they don't happen from reading reports, they don't happen typically from writing and reading 100 emails a day.

They happen by connecting with the real world.

Absolutely. I think your quote goes in goes well in tandem with my quote when I say that the the future of insights is sitting at the bar.

It's where magic happens because people, a) it's obviously kind of a key point of consumption, but it's people are more open. They're open to connecting with people. It's social media before social media ever happens. And so it's a it's a brilliant spot in terms of just seeing what's what's happening.

Absolutely. And I love the concept of pubs. I remember since I I started going to to to England when I was when I was 15. It was my first time in England. And then I discovered the pub.

And of course, at that time I couldn't drink yet. But but I I was still ordering my half a pint of Coke. And, you know, while my friends were, you know, were hosting me and, you know, having beer and I and I could see the dynamics that were totally different from from easily because, I mean, easily that's where the first pubs in Italy started. But they were basically a copy. It was just like a I don't know, like an like a coffee, like an espresso house in London or the equivalent.

You know, you bring something that works in another country, you know? And and what I love about that was the the ability to speak and talk to different people at the bar, you know, with all sort of different kind of backgrounds and so on. And and since moving here to Prague, one of my favorite things, and if you're ever in Prague, I'll I'll take you to one of those places.

And I quote it.

There are these really super old school pubs that they call Hospoda here. And and what's incredible is that you see at the same table every day of the week, like it could be a Tuesday night at five or Thursday night at six or whatever that is. There is a table booked by a random group of people, but they're always the same people and and they drink. They're not friends. You know, they drink together because they what unites them is that drinking occasion.

And you can see and when you when you browse around and you ask them what they do, you see a doctor, a politician, a plumber, an electrician, a teacher, a painter. You know, they all sit at the table. They talk to each other over beer and over, you know, a couple of sausages or goulash or whatever that is. And what's incredible for me, I still remember I was shocked and I always tell this story that it was a that was actually a Tuesday night that I think it was like 6PM. We went at five drinking after work with some friends and I sat at this table and was empty.

And then this old man comes in and he starts speaking Czech to me with my broken Czech and I understand that he wants to sit where I'm sitting. And I understand if that he asked if if that's free. He he actually wanted me to free free it for you. And then I said, yeah. Sure.

You can sit here. There were, like, three chairs next to me empty. And he was like, no. You you don't understand. You know?

Since 1975, every Tuesday at 6PM or five, whatever there was, I'm sitting here on your chair. So that is my chair. And then I was just like, I mean, I wanted to genuflect and say, like, respect to this to this man. This is this is loyalty. This is consistency.

This is and he he was coming from outside of Prague by train, and then he would catch the last train back to to the hometown every single and he he must have been, I don't know, like 70 or something like that. So it was it was super interesting for me because these kind of things, you only get them, as you say, not sitting at your desk. You know? There's nothing wrong with that, but you need to go out and meet this kind of people and learn this kind of stories because otherwise, you will never understand the beauty of entree. And that's what I love about the entree.

And and and talking about the occasion, like bridging on this, what would you say, like, for example, I'm I'm relatively new to the world of scotch, and and I'm always, let's say, puzzled or I have different views on what's what's a scotch drink for for cocktails and what's one for, you know, sipping needs and so on. Do you think that? Let's say certain brands. How does that work for you? Like, is it about certain brands?

Is it about certain aging? You know, sort of like a 15 year old or a 12 year old or a eight year old? What would you recommend and what what's your take on that?

We definitely don't think it's it's black or white. One of the key tenants of what we believe at Compass Box is there are no rules. And so if you enjoy your whisky, and if you enjoy your Compass Box in a cocktail, brilliant, neat, brilliant, however you want to do it. One of my favorite expressions of Compass Box was the first bottle I acquired about fifteen years ago was Hednesum, which is a beautiful blended grain, rich, indulgent. And what I do is I I I keep it in the freezer.

And so I I serve it in terms of as a as a dessert. And it's like a liquid creme brulee. It's absolutely stunning. And that's how I serve my hedonism. If that's how you want to do it, then that's great.

There are no rules. Think Scotch whisky has been very traditionally focused on meat consumption, one particular target, one particular type of consumption, and I think that's limited. When I look at other classes of whisky, in terms of Irish whisky, American whisky, they're more progressive and a bit more open. One of the things I think that manufacturers and suppliers get wrong is they're very tightly focused on their category, and consumers don't necessarily think like that. So more and more consumers are promiscuous across categories, and they're interested in brands which are relevant to them.

And so that's a big thing. With Compass Box, we offer an exploration across the range of different tastes and profiles in whisky, and they're all they've all got the common factor that they're delicious. And then people drink them in different ways, but it's really up to them. We can suggest ways we can suggest in terms of you're having I know you like as well as as well as an agroni, you like an old fashioned. Well, Cumbersbox Spicetree for me is a beautiful kind of base for a old fashioned.

If I'm having a highball, which is a very simple cocktail in verdict, a verdict, I use Orchard House because it's very fresh, very kind of fruity. It's like drinking summer, in terms of with lots of ice and soda water. It's it's it's perfect. So we've got different expressions that probably lean more towards the different types of consumption, but however people want to drink it, then then that's absolutely fine.

That's interesting. And how would you, let's say, match that to what we were discussing before now? Because sometimes I'm also changing opinions on, you know, like focusing on a target occasion or target drink sometimes like to pick your own drink. Like if you take, I don't know, like, cointreau with margarita or Campari with the Negroni, you know, that has been pushing that for ages. And so so let's say I feel that that gives a hook that gives the foot in the door to sparkle the conversation, so to say.

And then you you still need to allow freedom. Right? But where where can you draw the line in not being a jack of all trades kind of thing? Because when you talk about Compass Box, you have the luxury of having a wide range. So you're gonna have certain certain expressions that are more soothing certain occasion kind of thing.

Yeah.

But but what would you recommend, for example, to a brand owner that is starting with one brand and one SKU, and they want to be different. So they want to have that kind of, like, hook in the conversation. And where do you draw the line on on that one?

So how we do it first, and it's a how I do it on on Compass Box is I if it's somebody new, I give them a a short ten to fifteen second summary of what we are as Compass Box, and that's basically independent whisky makers. We're very creative, we're very transparent, we're independent, that's what we do. And then I ask them what they like. So what do you like to drink? What do you like to eat?

And then you get you get cues from that. So I've got some friends who swear they absolutely don't drink Scotch whisky. It's not for them, but they're bourbon drinkers. And so if I know they're bourbon drinkers, then that gives me a clue, because mentioning hedonism, which is our blended grain, for many people has got flavour profiles very similar to bourbon. And so, if they're a bourbon drinker, then I would suggest that they would have hedonism and try it neat to begin with just to get that taste profile and then drink it any way you want.

If somebody comes in and tells me they like sherryed whisky expressions, then we've got a variant stored Spaniard, which is which is heavily kind of sherryed and works quite well. So I normally look for for, clues in terms of asking people a couple of simple questions in terms of what they what they drink and what they might like. And so that tends to work, that well if they're if they like kind of the big kind of PD expressions, the odd bags of the frogs, Cardiolas, then we've got our own Piedmont. And then I would suggest they have a Piedmont, which is a a great Piedmont expression, but with a elegance and sophistication. So that's how that's how we do it.

And it's about connecting with people again. It's about understanding the problem that they might have, understanding what they like, and then kind of pitching what you have to that. So that's how I think it it, it works very well for Comics books.

That's that's really interesting. Would you say that the let's say that the best route would be to start from the intrinsics of of the liquid to start from the liquid first, and then try to understand, you know, because I like to talk about ABV contents or or I like to talk about taste, flavors, smokiness, pitted, peats, less pitted. That gives a bit of a hook to to think in. And I think that's very interesting because it feels like that that's really like the the bridge and the connection between the distillery and the marketing department. No?

Because I feel that sometimes, like, the distillers and the the makers are a little bit too much in a echo chamber of creating, you know, like experiments that have for a for a handful of people that is really like a handful of people like their friends. And it's kinda like connected because it's more like on try trying new things rather than answering to some taste profiles or taste needs.

We're very clear that whiskey making isn't something niche and off to the side that happens. It's the heart of who we are. We have a small team who are focused on actually making the whiskey but in many ways, all of us encompass box are independent whisky makers. And do agree with you that it should be led from the product. No amount of amazing marketing and brand building can overcome the fact that if there isn't magic in the liquid, then then it's not going to work.

Ultimately you can get people to try anything once, but the critical thing in any brand building is repeat, and you won't get that repeat unless that taste experience really delivers. It's why we all all of us in the alcohol industry obsessed about liquid lips because that is so it is so important in terms of getting up if you feel confident in the quality of your product and we absolutely are in terms of Compass Box, getting out there and sampling it in the right way becomes really, really important. And the entree is often where people first become exposed to the brand and and sample and then they may buy in the off trade. But yeah, the on trade is really critical for that first first experience.

This is really important what you're saying, because I feel very often there is an issue in communication on the selling story. You know? Because Yep. The liquid to lip, I feel it's it's the stage one kind of thing. But then there's a stage zero, which is the I I've got the bottle in front of you.

Yeah. And I explain it to you before you actually sip it because very often I feel the brands try to market themselves versus a competitor, for example, and they try to serve it as, you know, so so that the consumer is having that kind of expression in mind now. So it's like we are like this brand, you know, and you can use it this way, but they don't talk about the taste profile. And then this brand may be much more bitter or much sweeter. And, you know, if you explain it that way, you know, just mentioning the brand without talking about the taste profile, it may be totally off because it's just like, yeah.

But you just told me that it's exactly like that. I mean, to to your example, to give a real example, it could be a, I don't know, like a like a Laphroaig or an Ardbeg. And then if you talk about if you like Ardbeg, drink the pit monster, for exam. And then if you don't explain exactly what they're going to find of a difference versus Laphroaig or Ardbeg, you're going to take to put people off because then it's just like, this is not like Ardbeg. You know?

But if you explain that it's like, has a is a much more elegant finish or it's smoother or however that could be now without going into the proper selling sort of, then you try to explain to them what they're going to taste. And I always explain that because that's crucially important because I've I've I've been myself put off spirits brands just because they were sold to me in a wrong way because I didn't mean it that way. You know, like, I was not expecting something like this. You know, I had the Spritz once that it was sold to me as this is just like Aperol, but just slightly different. And they didn't explain to me that it was, for example, much bitter, much more bitter.

But then if you if they had explained it to me that way, you know, if you don't like Aperol because of the sugar content, you will like this one. And then I would drink it. But then if you tell me to me to tell me, I don't have Aperol, but I've got this one. It's it's just like the

No. That's very

true. Pepsi example. No?

Chris, that's very, very true. Using other brands I think can be a helpful reference point, but if you'd say you're just like Aperol, then nobody's going to change because they have Aperol. But if you're into a spritz occasion and you're looking for something lower sugar, then this can be really interesting. That's why I think it can work well having a reference point, saying why you're different. And at Compass Box, we have always kind of pushed the boundaries of being very transparent.

We believe that people should know exactly what's in the product. We're proudly a blend and what we believe is that blending it's like painting with multiple colours. I've worked on many amazing kind of single malts and often there's a particular kind of house style which is great, but what we can do as a blend is we can choose from different distilleries and we can paint with different colours, and so that allows us to come up with something different. It may be peated, but it's not going to be peated in the exact same way that a Freud might be or an Ardberg might be. So I think that's very important.

And I think the importance of the first cell is really important. You only get one chance to make a first impression. And if that's wrong or if that's inconsistent, then it doesn't work. I'm a huge believer in the power of consistency. The message that you tell in one bar about why somebody should drink your brand should be the same in another bar, should be the same in another city, because if it's not, then you will get found out.

And so again, it goes back to where we started. You can't be all things to all people, Chris, but just be very clear what it is you're trying to do, what is it you're not trying to do, and why it should work. And the other thing which you mentioned, which I think is so true is that the power of the packaging, I think that packaging is the primary source of marketing. You're not always going to be around in a bar when somebody walks into a bar and looks at the shelf and sees a compass box, you're not going to be able to explain well, compass box is this and that's why the packaging needs to work hard by by itself and communicate what the brand is by itself because yeah, you can't always assume that somebody's going to be somebody knows it or somebody's going to be there explaining why it's done in that way. That's why we're always very fussy and choiceful in terms of our packaging on Compass Points, and we do things in a very different type of way than many of the amazing brands, the traditional Scotch whisky brands.

We have fun, especially with our labels.

I see that.

Which is good because it should be a fun experience. We're in a high interest category. You mentioned those people in a bar in Prague, and they come together on a regular basis. It that's the joy of the category we work in. I started my career in fabric softeners and detergents, and people didn't come together every night, every week to talk about which fabric softener they were using.

And so this is we're very blessed to be working in the category that we're in.

I can imagine, I can imagine. And building on what you just said, like, you've got a very wide selection of of expressions, right? So that's the first thing you see on the back bar. You know, I see I see the pit monster. You know, I I I don't see necessarily compass box.

I mean, it took me some time, to be honest, to to realize that you know they were all part of the same family. I mean, there there was consistency. Obviously, you can see that that they are family, but in bars where you see only one of them and not, let's say a wall or you know, like a three-four bottles of it, then that's the first thing you see in terms of packaging, right? So how do you take selling in lower outlet segmentation without disclosing trade secrets obviously? Is it more of brand kind of approach or is it more like of a portfolio type of approach when you go out there and sell to bars, for example?

So a couple of points on that. One is you're right on for many people, people know our expressions before they know the brand. So people are very connected with the Piedmont, with Orchard House. And one of the things we're trying to dial up a little bit more is just that people understand the common thread of a Watts Compass Box. We talk about being a little bit more brand led rather than just being expression led because although each of our whiskey expressions are delightfully delicious, but they're different, then there should there's a common element about all of them, and we need to get a little bit better about explaining what Compass Box is rather than just what the Peak Monster is.

And so that's a very important balance to get right. And then how we look at it in terms of how do we target which bars we go into? There's an extra element in terms of do our consumers go into these type of bars? So if you get distribution in a bar where your target market doesn't go in, then that's a waste of distribution. That's a waste of effort because you're not going to get the turn.

I remember my early days sales training, a very experienced sales manager was taking me through and he gave me this lesson which I always remember it's never worry about your first sale, always think of your second sale. And so because anybody can get anybody can get a buyer to buy one bottle one case, but it's about getting that turn going so that they're to buy the second one, which I think is a very important lesson. So I think the consumer is really important. So if the consumer, if your target consumer doesn't go in there, then you shouldn't be going in there. And then I think it's some of our expressions are more tailored maybe to different types of occasions, so Orchard House, because it's light, it's delicate, it works brilliantly in cocktails.

If it's a bar that's cocktail led and we want to be on the cocktail menu, then that would be a very good one to choose. We have also products at different price range, and so that has an impact. So in an off trade environment, we sell products in our core range from probably about €40 to €100 Now, depending on the type of bar, then a €100 one might be less relevant, but a 40 or €50 one might be more relevant. Fundamentally, and this applies to the off trade as well, if we get distribution in a place where our consumers don't go, that's a waste and it's not going to sell there.

That's all for today. Remember that this is a two part episode. So listen to episode 26 as well. If you enjoyed it, please rate it and share it with friends and come back next week for more insights about building brands from the bottom up.