055 | Georgie Bell | Taste Profile & Storytelling | The Heart Cut

Welcome to the Maffeo Drinks Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Maffeo. In episode 55, I had the pleasure of chatting with Georgi Bell, co founder of the Hardcut. She has huge industry experience having previously worked at the Aggio Bacardi and at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. We discuss how to explain a product simply starting from a liquid, going into taste profile, storytelling and target occasions.

We dive into the life of a startup with learnings and course corrections to build bottom up. I hope you will enjoy our chat. One last thing, if you enjoy this podcast, you will also like the Maffei drinks guides. You can subscribe free or paid on mafayerdrinks.com. Hi, Georgie.

How are you doing?

I'm very well. How are you?

I'm fine. Thank you. And welcome to the Mafayer Drinks podcast. It's a real honor to have you. We've been exchanging some thoughts on LinkedIn through the the last month, so it's a it's a real honor to finally see you and and get to speak to you.

Oh, thank you. My husband and I are long time listeners, first time callers.

That's that's so great. That's so great. As you as you remember your your post on LinkedIn when you wrote that you were listening while taking care of your twins and it really made my day. And I felt like it must be so fascinating. I should do a, like, a poll on asking people, like, what do they do while they list while they listen to the podcast?

Because it's all sort of things from running to driving, to commuting, to feeding.

To to feeding, to walking your twins endlessly around the same park to ensure that they carry on sleeping.

Exactly. Maybe the next step is, letting them listen to to my voice. Maybe we'll help them to to fall asleep.

Maybe. I mean, we are setting up a family business here, so one that hopefully they'll inherit. So stardom young. Right?

No. That's that's great. So let's start with one of my usual questions that I always get. We are marketeers, salespeople, you know, like I I like to call it like a a a community. I don't like to separate marketers and salespeople.

You know, we are all part of the same family within the ecosystem. So but what what's your take on on building a brand? Like, does it start with the brand or with the liquid?

Ultimately, I believe we're all here because these spirits are being made or liquids are being produced. That's why we're in these jobs, you know? So for me, it always starts with, with the spirit. You can have a really compelling brand story. You can have an incredible brand world.

It can be vibrant. It can be something completely. You can have an exceptional team, but if your spirit or your liquids that you're selling and pushing tastes like garbage, then, you know, people will see through that instantly. So for me, from my background, working in advocacy and now as a business owner, everything for us starts with the liquid itself. Everything starts with the spirit And then the brand world and the messaging and the story is built up after that, and the brand is built up after that.

Mhmm.

Yeah. I agree with you. Like, I'm a big believer of the liquid because ultimately for me, I mean, nothing to add to what you were saying. It's mainly the fact that you elevate that story and then you build the brand on the foundations that the liquid allows you to to work on. Like, recently last month I was in Dubai at Gulf Food and I joined a panel discussion and it was on functional drinks.

And we were talking about functional elements of, you know, functional food and beverage. And something that came to my mind was an old Apple adverts, you know, like, I don't know if you remember when the iPod was called. And I said, we should stop talking about gigabytes and we should start talking about songs Because back then the app when the when the iPod was launched, it was 1,000 songs in your pocket. So they they they blocked that narrative of like five gigabytes, 10 gigabytes, 20 gigabytes, you know, and but I don't know how big a song is, you know, how many megabytes that song is. So I I cannot do the math.

So for me, it's how do we elevate the conversation from a very technical spirits conversation. And we get it on what's in it for the consumer, no, because, know, you can talk about taste profiles and everything, but what is the average Joe tasting? That's a very important aspect. And then you build the brand after that. But then to the apple example, I mean, if apple wasn't what, what apple is, you know, like people would see through it and then they would just rush into technical service and have it repaired all the time because then, you know, there wouldn't be foundations in it.

Right?

Yeah. I I I couldn't agree with that more. Actually, as you were speaking there, was thinking back to some of the whiskeys that I looked after at Bacardi. Aberfardi was one of them. And we used to say, we see with whiskey and we'll talk about this, I'm sure quite a bit, because it's quite a particular spirit with a particular audience or drinker.

And we used to say with Aberfali that it had a longer fermentation time, the honeyed richness, say what you want about that. But actually, I think that was a good way of pinning it because longer fermentation time, what does that really mean? You know, to the average Joe fermentation, why should I care about that? Honeyed richness. Oh, I know about that.

That means when I drink this whiskey, I'm gonna taste this beautiful honey rich character. But you could say that that story in itself was built up from the liquid character first. We knew that it had this honeyed richness. Why does it have that honeyed richness? Because of that longer fermentation time.

So it's that functional benefit that was tied in together. So you will, we would never just say it had a longer fermentation time. It was always something for something, which really helps a con consumer, not only educate them. So they they're learning something they're going, oh, now I understand what a longer fermentation does. And I can tell that for my friends, but they also understand what that means to them.

Why should they care about that? And it's because of the taste profile.

To build on what you're saying, I mean, now listening to you is also how do you make it easy to remember so that, let's say average consumer, but even like educated consumers can actually repeat it to their friends. And if you allow me even look cool, you know, with them, you're during a dinner or like a business dinner or a private dinner or whatever, you know, like, just like when you take out that bottle of whiskey and somebody says, oh, actually, like it reminds me of honey. And there's like, do you know why? Because of, know, but in a very simple way without being like, oh, you're a nerd kind of thing. No.

And it reminds me actually on my previous life when I was working on, on the Pilsner Urquil brand and, you know, on beer, there's all this, you know, sweetness and happiness balance. The hop brings bitterness and, you know, the rest of the body, you know, like the sugars and everything, know, of course with the sweetness. And when I attended a training from one of the advocacy trainers back back then, and despite I was working on the brand, I mean, was sitting literally at the brewery that was my office. So, you know, I was living and breathing the, the word and, and the smells and everything. But I remember that visit I did in prosciutto feature, you know, like where they make prosciutto in Parma.

And when the guy was explaining to me like the saltiness and the sweetness, because we call, you know, prosciutto dolce, you know, like we call it like a sweet prosciutto, which doesn't make sense because there's no sugar in it. He's just said what it means is actually that it's less salty than another that is much saltier. And what he explained to me was that the salt doesn't permeate the fat of the Parma ham. So actually when you take a slice of Parma ham, now I'm getting geeky on this. Like, you know, if you remove the fat, it's actually much saltier because you are removing that balance of sweetness.

It's just like sweet because it's non saltiness. It's not sweetness technically. But what I what I used that on my trainings back then on beer was that when you drink the beer and there you have the the foam head and the and the body of the beer. If you if you remove the the the I mean if the head of the foam goes down, it make it becomes much more bitter because the foam, the bitterness doesn't permeate the foam. So the foam is exactly like the fat of the ham.

And you feel it much bitter because, you know, you don't get that balance of foaminess and, you know, of foam that brings you that perceived weakness, so to say, you know? The point is that it's very easy to to replicate because maybe that, you know, you are discussing this over dinner and maybe you you serve them some Parmaham and they can immediately relate on that, you know, taste perspective and perception. And then all of a sudden it's like, wow, now I got it, you know, and nobody taught me that. I mean, it just came to my mind when I did one plus one. I said, oh, I remember last year when I went to that, you know, that guy explained it to me that way.

And now I hear it. I hear foam and sweetness and, you know, the difficulty of bitterness to permeate the foam and one plus one, I can connect the dots, you know? And the more we can do that in trainings, the easier it is for people to actually say, oh, I like that kind of taste profile rather than anything else.

You touch upon two things that are really important to me. One is sort of story of the social currency, you know, you learn that you're able to bring that out at dinner party. You're able to say, Hey friends, did you know this right piece of social currency for you that you're able to give out? And I think that when we're talking about stories about our brands and, you know, taste profiles of brands and why does it taste a certain way? So one of our whiskeys that we have with the color cut is, from M and H distillery and it's matured in a pomegranate wine cask.

Phenomenal, a phenomenal whiskey. It's delicious. And it has this beautiful sort of medjool date, cherry pie character to it. And so when you taste it and we have on the label that it's a more pomegranate wine cask. So you, when you taste it for someone who's bought it, they can bring it out with friends.

They can say this tastes like this tastes like cherry pie tastes like sticky Medjool date Because it's been matured in a pomegranate wine cask. Isn't that cool? And they can go on further. That's a piece of social currency immediately gives you a cool point, which is great. And it's what we're all looking for.

We all like to tell stories to our friends. But secondly, you want that story to be, they used to call them bar bites. You want it to be a bar bite of information. It's very easy to pick up and carry on. You're sitting at a bar.

You see a, you're sitting with a friend, you see a bottle behind the bar and you go, Hey friend, did you know X about this? And actually on top of that, one thing I'm a huge fan of, which I think is really important is a through the bottle. Because ultimately your design is also telling your story for when you're not there. And I think it's really important that we all create these through the bottle pitches so that each part of your bottle or different parts of your label is helping give tea identifiers to that story so that when you're not there is that clue for the bartender, for the friend who's introducing the brand to another friend through word-of-mouth, which for a pen like ours is so important, but they can go, Hey, I see this heart stencil cut out on the front. This is because of that, you know?

So

Absolutely. Absolutely. I I I love that, bar bite. I will, I will steal it if you allow me.

Yeah. Freaking little bath nap. You know? A a a bar stack of a story that you can pick up and go with.

And and I love that. And and what one one thing that I that I talk about is actually like this, because sometimes I very much challenge my own thinking, and and I've been Okay. Against storytelling and probably, like, there are some old posts of mine on LinkedIn, like that still says like something against storytelling, but to correct myself, like through the years is that like I'm against what I call fluffy storytelling. I'm for pragmatic storytelling. So the storytelling that gives you something, you know, I don't want to tell you the storytelling that is about me and my family and, you know, for the sake of it.

I mean, if there is a place there because we're talking about something and then my family is relevant in that barbite, then so be it, you know? But then if it's something that I just stick in because it's like, oh, yeah. Because when I was a little child, I used to go with my mother and I've always wanted to be, you know, to create a whiskey brand and it's like, okay, but tell me something more. What am I supposed to taste now? Like, you know, we we're talking tasting notes and we're not talking you in the park and you in the forest with your parents.

What's your take about that that story? Because, I mean, you've been doing advocacy for a while and, know, like, you've been in, you know, in marketing. And what's your perception on that? And and how do you think, like, the right way should be on storytelling?

I'm smiling here because I'm like, oh, am I gonna say something that you might disagree with? But Please. Like, I spent eight years as a global whiskey ambassador. Okay. And I agree with you.

Functional storytelling is the most important piece. Right? And as you said, no one really cares about your family. And you're gonna tell this beautiful story at how it reminds me of the bread that was cooking in my grandma's kitchen on this day that this happened and that happened, you know, that I can't, I can't relate to that. I do believe that there is a slight, sort of area where you can put in a little bit, a sprinkling of fluffy storytelling to sort of heighten potentially the romanticism of the category that you're putting out there.

For instance, when I'm talking about whiskey usually, and this isn't with the heart cut as much. When I'm talking about whiskey usually, and I'm doing a tasting for a group of consumers and I am talking about the production process, let's say, I might say at the end that the whiskey will be slumbering in a cloak of oak, for instance. Now that's pretty romantic and it's pretty fluffy, but it does make a consumer go, oh, that's quite nice. Actually. I get that.

I understand that. So that's what I mean by every once in a while, there can be a sprinkling, a sprinkling of romanticism, especially for a category like whiskey. But at the end of the day, it does have to be pragmatic and it has to be, you have to be able to relate to the storytelling and actually you bring up tasting notes there, which I think is a really important one. For the heart cut, we put on the front of our bottles, three tasting notes, which we've now expanded to five, but they're tasting notes that you can relate to. So things like mid your dates, cherry pie, fresh peaches, banana bread, candied pecans, for instance, but tasting notes that make the whiskey onto light because too often we use tasting notes like vanilla toffee.

Oak, the number of times I see the tasting note of taste of Oak or has a final flavor of Oak. What does that mean? I don't know what I've never chewed on oak before. Like I've never chewed on oak and I going through all of these tasting notes online from, from the, from, I went through recently the drinks international, most admired whiskey brands. And they looked at some of their tasting notes and they say that their whiskey tastes of oak.

Like, okay. I, I know as, as, as someone who has a degree in whiskey, what you mean by that, like oak black tones. I know you mean that it's like a vanilla toffee coconut character coming through, but my brother and sister-in-law, they're gonna read that and they're gonna be like, Oak, like, what, what does that even mean? It's matured in Oak. So it tastes of Oak.

How does what? So in a long winded answer to your question, I do think that the functional storytelling is the most important piece in a bar bite or bar snack style format. That is that people can relate to, especially when it comes to tasting notes. And on top of that, when you are telling a story on the odd occasion, there is. There is space for a sprinkling of romanticism, depending on the category that you're working in.

Yeah. No. I I agree. I mean, I, I I take it. I take your I take your challenge because this is this is part of my myself, you know, like, sometimes they call me like a like a tank because I just go in and just like smash through the wall and, you know, like I forget about my romantic side, so to say.

But I agree with you. It's just that like my allergy, so to say, to the fluffy storytelling is that sometimes it's this only sparkle and not enough meat underneath. So it's just like, you know, does the does the pepper on the steak, but then the steak is overcooked. And then I think like, okay, so it's a bit of a balance and I get it, you know, like, and I agree with you to be honest. It's is this like, how do you ensure that?

And this is some of the challenges that I I get also on this bottom up thinking now. And it's like, I was talking to Julian Marcelia, an old colleague of mine, the previous podcast guest is evokes about both ism. Now I was like, it's a bit of both, you know, it's just like top down and bottom up. And my take was like, I I shouldn't remind anybody to build top down because that's the path of least resistance. No?

So that's why I I don't remind people to add, to your point, the sparkle because if you give it to a market to an average marketing department, they will just put sparkles in and stars and flashes, but they will forget to to put the basics.

And also those sparkles were relayed back to things that you're like, oh, that's really great, But why did that really matter? At the end of the day, we often talk about you wanna have three key stories about your brand, right? Or three key things. What are the three things you want people to take away from this? So you're working in Scotch whiskey for instance, from one of your key things is your beautiful water source.

Well, that's lovely. You've got a river running right next to your distillery. That's wonderful. That's why your distillery is probably built where it is because water is heavy and you need more water than anything else to make whiskey. You know, you need it for, for cooling, for products, for bottling, for cleaning.

So you, you need water and it's so important to have a beautiful pristine water source. But, But when you talk about, and when a marketing team gets hold of, and I'm not putting my finger to anyone here, but when a marketing team gets hold of that story of the water and they say, and it's this beautiful water source and it causes this love flavor of the whiskey. That's BS rubbish.

No. And that's, and that's the thing is it's a little bit like, like when you were talking about the river, you know, that I was thinking about cities, no? And I mean, come on. All cities were born I mean, all major cities, come on, like, were born either on a coast or on a river. You know?

Like, starting from Rome to whatever other city was ever built. And it it's always like you you cannot say, like, Rome is beautiful because of its river. You know? Rome is beautiful. And by the way, there is a river running through it that enabled the development of that city.

You know? And this is this is the interesting thing that, what I mean by, like, sometimes you get stuck on what you inherit, you know, from previous people, from previous stories, from previous thing, but then people get lost. No? And to to build on what you were saying about the functional storytelling, there is this element like I was discussing in a previous episode and and we were talking about like the layers about building the story. You you don't rush into the kind of like family tree of your history.

You know, you start with something more tangible that, okay, like I went to school here and I like this, you know, and then you talk about your grandfathers, but you don't talk about your ancestors right away, you know. So it builds and to your previous point about the bar bites, you know, give something and then if if the person wants more, it's like, oh, wow. What do you mean? You know? Like, tell me more.

Oh, that's really interesting. Tell me more. And then you build it as a as a ladder so that it's easier. No? And when I did the WSCT, the trainer like Nick Nick Ryan, and I I did it online during during COVID and he's based in Ireland.

And and I was the only, let's say, non Anglo Saxon of the of the group of students. Now they were like Americans, Irish, British people. I couldn't relate to their tastes. You know, they were talking about candies I've never tasted. They were talking about some flavors that I never tasted.

And then it was clear because he he was trying to actually create something for me dedicated to me because I have a I mean, an Italian, Mediterranean, of course, I I've lived in quite a few countries, so I developed some different tastes. But the paleo taste of of my mouth is very Italian. You know? So when you talk about certain toffees, I have no idea what what you mean. And it goes back to your oak, thing.

No? So it's it's always good to replicate it in a easy to consume kind of way so that people can understand what it means. Otherwise, you feel launched in the hard cut in, I don't know, Spain, you know, maybe your tasting notes will have to be adjusted to a Spanish kind of like taste profile because otherwise they have no idea what those sort of things taste like. I

find that exciting.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I I I, you know, the thought that we all taste different things and one person's white chocolate is another person's rose is great. And actually that's, you know, what you just touched on there is such a key thing that we can all do from a global marketing global drinks perspective is there is no one size fits all. We know this when that comes to marketing strategies, we know that when it comes to sort of activations, you can have a global plan, but it always has to be locally adapted to the local culture. You should take the same thing in with your tasting notes as well. So when you're creating marketing material for different countries, make it relative.

Don't try and create one set of bland tasting notes that you think will work everywhere throughout the world, because one they're uninspiring and two, they're just not gonna set your brand apart from the rest, but change them so that they really do relate to the local country. Again, working in whiskey and working here in The UK, we often use sweets as references or baked goods and stuff. And then you go and you do a tasting at whiskey and in Shanghai, and they're like, what's a rhubarb and custard sweet, you know? So you do have to make it relative. When I used to do a lot of traveling and when I used to do a lot of tastings before I do any tasting, I would try and spend at least a day in markets going around to bars, speaking to bartenders, also speaking to our local team so that when I was presenting whiskey, I could say this tastes like X, Y, Z.

That was familiar with their palates and not mine, but also be able to call out specific bars in those neighborhoods and say, Hey, last night I was at speak low for instance, or I was at the union trading company, you know, rather than trying to speak about bars on the other side of the world, but it does help put your brand into perspective within that country that you're doing or tasting.

Absolutely. Absolutely. No. That's a that that's a great point. I mean, I I didn't think about it that way, like on on really seeing and spotting the city because you need to be relatable to those people because otherwise it's just like a ethereal, like Fugizi Fugazi as they said in the Wall for Wall Street.

And I mean, on this, like, you know, the, the taste profile and everything, let's have another fight. Let's have a fight about target occasion versus target consumer. Then like now that we are warmed up now, you know, I'm a big, I'm a big believer of the target occasion and the target consumer doesn't really fit in my world much anymore in the sense that, you know, like I've, I've mentioned it many times in previous episodes, you know, like I, I can be different types of consumers. Maybe I'm a little bit weird that I can adapt to many different kinds of taste profiles and I can drink different kinds of drinks and different kinds of things. But for me, ultimately it's about the, the target occasion.

And I like to build brands based on a target occasion rather than on a specific target consumer. What's your take on that one?

I I do agree with you that we should be looking at a target occasion. Layered into that for us, we have a consumer. I wouldn't say it's a target consumer per se, in terms of this is their age, this is their gender. This is the way they should look. This is where they live, but we have more of a consumer mindset piece that sits alongside that target occasion.

But that only comes off the back of the type of brand that we are. So for the heart cuts, we are a single cask whiskey company and our whiskeys are stronger than most. We're not cask strength. Sometimes we are, but we reduce our whiskey sound to strength, the bottling strength, which we find is delicious as is, or you can add more water. What I mean by that is our strength for our whiskeys go from anything from 49.9% ABV for our East London liquor company bottling all the way at the moment, to 57% ABV.

And that's for our M and H bottling because of some of those facts that I've just thrown out to you there. So single cask whiskey and stronger. That means that our target occasion is quite tailored to that and for whiskey. So I know that our whiskey. Probably aren't cocktail whiskies.

So we're not pushing that as a brand. I also know that they're probably not whiskeys that you're gonna sip while having your main meal. Right? So we're not pushing that as a brand. And I know that because of those facts as well, that these aren't whiskeys that we're gonna be pushing for a very high volume, buzzy, you know, party sort of vibe or a nightclub sort of vibe, because that's not the sort of place where people would drink that style of spirit.

If they do wonderful. But that's not what we're going after with a brand for the heart cut. For our occasion, it's very much in, not on trade. We're going after whiskey bars, hotel bars, where we know that they'll have brilliant cocktails, but also an incredibly well curated whiskey selection. And notice that I say curated there instead of volume, because I think it's better to have less, but better curated rather than saying we have all of these whiskeys, but you know, they're all not much of a muchness because everyone is different, but they've just been thrown out there because the bar itself is looking for a volume of whiskeys rather than curation of whiskies and restaurant bars, because we are very much going after that in restaurant bars, that after dinner occasion, we wanna be on dessert menus.

We would love to be on dessert menu. We're so small right now though. We're not there yet, but that is our dream to be on the dessert menu when they have the mix of spirits that they recommend to go with dessert or to have instead of dessert. That's where we, as the heart cup would like to be. With all of that in mind, that that's the target occasion that we're going after.

No. We're not painting painting as much of a picture as, you know, the Aperol spreads. You want the sun shining. You want to go to a terrace bar and all of that. But this is as a very new brand.

That is what we're going after. Now, one other thing about the heart cut, I hope this is answering your question, but one other thing about the heart cut that I haven't mentioned. So I've said that we are single cask whiskeys and we are stronger than the average. Right? Not only that, but the hard cut spotlights, new world whiskey distilleries.

So new world whiskey distilleries, you can look at, it's always got two lenses to it. One is for whiskey distilleries that have come from outside the big fives or the traditional whiskey making country. So Scotland, Ireland, America, Japan, and Canada. Okay. So any distillery that comes from outside those five or a distillery from within those bars who are making whiskey unlike everybody else.

So they're taking this sort of what if mindset and putting it to their distillery. So a brilliant example of that is Lecnene in Scotland. It's in Scotland, which is seen as a more, a, a more traditional whiskey country, but you have brilliant, incredible distilleries there. I mean, all of them are amazing in their own life. And you also have these incredible new distilleries there who are trying to do something a little bit different, like McNeen, like portably that's just opened in Edinburgh for instance.

So we're focusing on them. Now, the reason that I say that this then leans into our target consumer is because within the world of whiskey and within the world of whiskey consumers, you have those diehard fans who would drink scotch or nothing as a result of that. And because of the way that we're trying to position the heart cut, which is very much based on accessibility, collaboration, and education. It means that instantly when not appealing to that audience, there are no age statements on the front of our bottles. You have in very small type, the date distilled in the date bottled.

And so, because of that design, we're immediately not attracting the attention of those diehard whiskey fans, which is fine. That's what we wanted to do with this because that sets us apart from everybody else. And that's what my husband and I are so excited about. And we know that there is the growth to that because actually when you look at IWSR data, wild whiskey is on fire. New wild whiskey is like, it's so exciting.

And that's where you've got the passionate distillers with these making amazing spirits, laden with stories about why they're bringing them to life. So in answer to your question, I do believe it's I I I do lead with target occasion. I think that occasion is very much based on your liquid profile. Well, for us it is anyway, if you look at the hard facts about what we're bottling. But then you can also layer on top of that, your target consumer mindset as it were that layers back into it.

So for us with the heart cut, it is people and consumers that are excited to discover new distilleries, who are excited to explore the world. People who we talked about them, my husband and I, in terms of the person that we're going after, is a, we call it as curious curious foodie, someone who's excited about flavor. Now there's no demographic associated with that. There's no gender associated with that, but it is a, I'd say it's more of a mindset as it were.

It's very interesting. I mean, first of all, like, thank you because that was a very nice I think you answered another question as well within that question. So I like that because, I mean, I would have asked you about, you know, like the target occasion or what's your target occasion. So you you have answered that question already. And what I like about that, and I was listening to you and and I really, you know, it really matched my thinking of what I'm I'm doing when I when I'm advising brands, you know, like I'm really going through all these points, know, because, you know, the ABV, how does the ABV plays?

Do you do cocktails? Do you do neat? It's a set of, you know, two roads, crossroads, and then it's like, do you go left or right? Do you go left or right? Do you go left or right?

And it doesn't mean that if you went right, right, right, you cannot go left. It's just that that's not what you push in your narrative, in your communication. Then I mean, people want to drink it, you know, if they want to drink a 59, 57% ABV with sushi, I mean, so be it. I agree with you on that, on that point that, you know, it's about you, you call it like consumer mindset. For me, it's also like, it's, it's the slash of like consumer mindset and the state of mind of the consumer in that moment, as well as the type of consumer, or even like the type of palette, you know, that that consumer had, you know, recently, like it, it, it was just published today.

I was a guest in another podcast. It's called marketing with Vani and with Vani Gupta. She's from India and a marketer and also a professor at university. And we were discussing taste profiles of people, no? And it's like some of the things could be cutting some people off because of price, you know, and then automatically you think it's an older consumer or because of taste profile and automatically you think it's like it's a kind of like rougher palette.

I mean, it's more sophisticated on one end, but it can handle harder things on the other hand. But then at the same time, could be a rich kid that has a father with a huge collection of single malts. And maybe he started at 21 drinking cask strength, single barrels, you know? Of course they are outliers, but what we're trying to do in the industry to make it more, you know, inclusive, you know, also for women and for, you know, other people that don't show up in the regular kind of like whiskey drinker, like 50 plus tweed jackets on a on a leather armchair by the fireplace kind of thing. And this really pushes this thing.

It's like, I don't care. I mean, you could be a girl that is like 29 and you may love cask strength whiskey And I you know, it's totally fine. So I don't want to do the communication targeting a certain type of consumer. I want to target certain type of people that like certain type of things in that certain type of occasion?

Oh, there is so much to unpack there. Yeah. Yeah. And if I could have my way, look, I'm not a world class marketer. Okay.

I own a brand with my husband, which I love and I, I love, well, I love him, but I love the brand and I, I love being a brand owner and a founder and facing all of these challenges. And also my background is in brand advocacy, which obviously straddles, marketing and commercial and strategy and everything all in one. If I could do one drink, I would ask people to throw away your age and gender portrait of your drinker. Yeah. Please.

Because the number of times I read whiskey decks and they're like, yes, well, whiskey, we're really targeting here. Someone who's, you know, 30% of our audience will be female and 70% will be male. Chris, I, I was 24 when I became a global brand ambassador for the Scotch malt whiskey society who deals in cask strength, single cask whiskey. And I was flying around the world for six months of that year, doing presentations and trainings for people twice, three times my age talking about whiskey. Do you think that my pen portrait was the pen, paper trade that was on any deck I've ever seen for any whiskey company?

Absolutely not. And yes, I'm a bit of an outlier, but I'm not alone, you know? And I was singing this morning about target occasions as well. And obviously we've just had mother's day in The UK. I would love to know from whiskey companies, whether they've spent as much marketing on mother's day as they do on father's day, because the number of times in my career, I've spoken to people and they've said, yes, well, we're focusing on father's day.

And they've said, well, what about mother's day? I said, well, if you're gonna market for father's day there's a whiskey brand you need to do. So for mother's day, I will, you know, that's just not seen to be as big an occasion. And I'm like, well, it's not as big an occasion right now because we're not making it an occasion. Marketing girl stories, which then creates the stories of the future and the trends for the future.

I mean, really little example that I know it's a silly one, but De Beers diamonds, you would, you

used to propose

with diamonds for engagements. Right. And then marketing came in the way and they were said, we should have diamonds. And, and all of a sudden, whenever you propose, have a diamond, you know, if we all don't work collectively to change how inclusive the whiskey industry can be. And it is it's a common, it come on so much in the last fifteen years I've been in this industry, but if we all don't work collectively to do that, we're gonna carry on with some of these stigmas that are out there, such as Mother's Day and Father's Day.

Absolutely. It's just one little example.

And sometimes it can also be like a part of the Blue Ocean strategy. I mean, like, how how crowded is Father's Day? You know, even let's say, I'm just like being devil's advocate now. Even if you don't believe in that, you know, try it just because, you know, no no whiskey brand would ever advertise in in a supermarket chain on Mother's Day. So do it.

You know, just take take the opportunity as a commercial opportunity because, you know, your promotion on father's day most probably is not gonna work because there's there will be all the possible whiskey brands in the country doing Father's Day anyway. You know? So it's like it's a bit of a kind of like challenger thinking again in in these kind of things because we know that, you know, there are some outliers out there, of course, but at the same time, it's like, those are the, you know, this whole thing about super consumers and light buyers, you know, the Byron Sharp, you know, how brands grow with kind of growth kind of things. There will be a lot of light buyers that will do, you know, the thing with your brand anyway. Just leave it open.

You don't have to do it. Like, you know, be specific because you have to be very specific in the, in the targeting, but in the targeting of the venues, you know, on the outlets where you go to the targeting of the occasion, because if it's a cast strength and it's over a certain price, people will not have shots in a club at 3AM kind of thing. But then leave it open from a consumer perspective because then, you know, the invisible hand will sort it out somehow, you know, within Yeah. Those boundaries that you have created, but don't set boundaries everywhere for the sake of setting them.

Totally. I'd like to nail one more thing on top of that as well, which is try something different again, using the mother's day as an example, you know, do some campaigns, maybe put some of your marketing spend towards mother's day. Okay. It doesn't get the result that you really were looking for, but it does get a result. Great.

Don't just say next year, oh, we tried it last year and it didn't really give us what we were exactly looking for. Try again, but try with a different landscape, take a read because from a cultural perspective around us, culture is changing year on year on year. Right? So try it again. Don't just do the same thing.

Have a read on what's going on from a cultural perspective, Speak to the outlets that you're working with the year before. Ask them how they thought it, how it went, what they would change this time around. Did you pick the right places? Do a good audit of what you think worked and what didn't work. And then try again the year after.

Yeah. Because, again, so many times I've spoken to people and said, oh, we we did a campaign for Mother's Day last year and it didn't work, so we're just not gonna do it this year. And they're like, oh, cool.

And not know?

Okay. That was one step forward, six steps back.

And I I agree. And and and it it brings me to another point that is one of the things that I'm really hammering on is that it's about, like, setting the right objectives and KPIs. No? Because it could be that, you know, how are you judging that, you know, like, and why are you doing it? You know, are you doing that because you want to sell, you know, seven more cases in a supermarket?

Or are you doing it because you want to change something in the communication of what you're doing, you know? Because maybe what, you know, what you should target, it could be like, what is the PR that got out of it, you know, that maybe you were the the challenging brand and then some newspaper wrote about the the Mother's Day, the only the only whiskey that did it on Mother's Day or one of the few whiskeys that did it on Mother's Day or whatever, you know, maybe you got a PR exposure, You didn't sell anything in that supermarket. You sold three bottles, but you got such a huge PR that is enabling a change into something. Then next year there will be all the mothers that like whiskey that miss that or all the husbands that don't like whiskey whose wife like whiskey, you know, will spot it. And then it's like, shit.

You know, I missed it this year. You know, next year, I'm gonna buy her a bottle because she mentioned it. She sent me that article. You know, her friends were talking about it. So now it even sorted out a present issue.

You know, it's like, I don't know what to buy. I'm always buying the same stuff. You know, like, okay. Next year, I buy her a bottle of whiskey. You know?

And then you maybe change it. There is two lenses, as you said before, you know. One lens is the is the purpose of how we want to drive inclusiveness into the whiskey industry. And the other thing is it's even just like, let's, let's call it like collateral things like, at the agencies, no, of people that don't really mind about that aspect, but you are serving them a solution to a problem. You are driving something.

You are doing something else. You're driving a novelty. You're driving some new way of doing things. Even if you don't mind about the other aspect, you know, just do it for what you care about.

Just do it for what you care about and also do it because of a moral code of trying to collectively, part of one category, help change and adapt that category. It might not end in sales. You might get a pickup on your own PR and your own sort of, you might get a little spike in your Instagram followers. Brilliant. You might not get as big as you want, but what you have done is you've helped your category slowly change.

And we all have our own brands. Yes. And we all want our own brands to succeed, but you know, what's the saying the rising tide helps sail all ships. At the end of the day, you want your category that you're within to also succeed. And so there are certain things out there that you should do that helps that category that will then help your brand and it will help other brands and then it will help your brand again.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you're a challenger, you know, like that's your excuse to challenge the bigger players. And if you're a big player, then that's your way of doing something for the industry, you know, as such, no?

That's all for today. Remember that this is a two part episode fifty five and fifty six. If you enjoyed it, I have a small ask. Please rate it, comment and share it with friends and come back next week for more insights about building brands from the bottom up. One last thing, if you enjoy this podcast, you will also like the Maffei drinks guides.

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