Fifty Loyal Accounts Beat Three Hundred Weak Ones | Kaitlin Wilkes | The Ada Coleman Project | Bottom-Up Cut #007
You mentioned hospitality brands. Yes. And you nailed something that is a dear topic of mind, which is the difference between the drinks industries, the brand side of things, and the hospitality industry, which is the hotel, restaurant, cafes, bars. Two sides of the same coin, metal in between that touches them, which is probably the bar or the bottle or a glass or whatever. But they are different.
Chris Maffeo:No? So how do you see it? And where do you see the disconnect that I mentioned?
Kaitlin Wilkes:I remember standing behind a bar, making a daiquiri and having no deep connection to the rum brand I was pouring, then flipping the script of going into that world of that rum brand and going like, wow, there's a whole other part of the industry I didn't know about. I took on a role working with Seed that really made me understand that the drinks industry and the hospitality industry are two separate things. When I realized that what brings us together is the liquid in the glass, that disconnect is part and parcel our own fault. There was a certain point where brands were putting the most expensive, outrageous, crazy experience in front of bartenders, giving them the red carpet, which is cool, but has maybe had a long term effect on the expectation that the brand is responsible for absolutely everything. Of course, we're selling something for them, so we need to ambassador them as well.
Kaitlin Wilkes:But the disconnect comes down to the fact that most people pouring the liquid, bartenders that have been doing it three to six to nine years, don't have a super deep interest in what is the return on investment for that bottle, for that brand. Because there's no deep interest, the language is not really gonna cross paths. You see it when a bartender goes from being a bartender into becoming a brand ambassador and going like, oh my god, I don't understand what this corporate jargon is, when they're getting emails from the distributor or someone in finance. It's like, they're totally different because the brand is interested in selling cases and the bartender is interested in selling cocktails. I think that's where it's at.
Kaitlin Wilkes:I think any drinks brand should go back to worry about selling cocktails, especially when it comes to smaller independent brands, because that's what we do and that's what bartenders can do. At the end of the day, when a bartender is an ambassador for your brand, because they're picking up a bottle and pouring it with pride, because you show up to their venue, you ask how they are, are you engaged in an authentic, meaningful way, you don't get drunk in their bar, you have a professional but authentic relationship with them. I think we begin to close that gap. But the guy in finance is never going to fully understand why there's value in flying someone from Singapore to London for three days to do a gas shift. At the same time, it is a marketing exercise.
Chris Maffeo:Is it also like a managing expectations that probably kind of went wrong in a way?
Kaitlin Wilkes:Exactly. Maybe managing expectations. Maybe we expected too much from each other. Sometimes you don't say enough of what you need. Right?
Kaitlin Wilkes:Like, back to relationships and communication. If you don't communicate what you need and you expect someone to just do it, it's not gonna be done. So when you enter a partnership with a brand that put clear objectives, like, what are we trying to achieve?
Chris Maffeo:Like,
Kaitlin Wilkes:are we the house X? Are we the shelf X? Are we the secondary spirit in the menu? What does that look like?
Chris Maffeo:Because I usually see there is this disconnect trade people in big companies, and they get on trade. And then there's ex FMCG
Kaitlin Wilkes:Mhmm.
Chris Maffeo:Type people, and they have a difficulty in getting on trade. 100%. Then the finance people get into that big bucket. Mhmm. Is it more like the marketing team and the on trade team, we are giving a solution by partnering with that bar?
Chris Maffeo:So then people get the room gets very smoky. And then it's all of a sudden, it's like, I really wanna work with Kaitlin. I don't really care. I didn't nail the deliverables, but she said yes, so we have to do it. And then I sell it internally to my boss that he's not gonna say no, and I overstretch it, that you will sell loads of cocktails and do crazy things with us.
Chris Maffeo:And then we both know that it's never gonna happen. And the way the KPIs are set are wrong. That's basically where the ship hits the fan.
Kaitlin Wilkes:Yeah. That's exactly what happens. But it's true. If we're gonna fly a bar from London to Singapore or vice versa, what's the purpose of this event? And I think as brands, we need to think about what is the purpose?
Kaitlin Wilkes:The first point of call I would choose is as a brand, if I am in both of those markets, would want to pick one of my biggest brand partners or volume driven accounts to come to my home city or whatever it is, that is also an account of mine. I would very rarely want to invest something as a first time. I have also seen it work as a first time partnership. It's about having that discussion and meeting those expectations from the get go to say, we want to bring X person here. How do you feel about it?
Kaitlin Wilkes:Do you want to do it? But in us doing that, can we look more at a long term approach and partnership together? That if we just continue to fly people around the world, it's like, what's the point of the guest shift anyway? The guest shift is becoming this photo opportunity, which is cool, but is there something more? Can we do more for the community?
Kaitlin Wilkes:Is there purpose driven in the guest shift other than just bringing a bar from London's Drinks to a bar in Singapore?
Chris Maffeo:It's also about the longevity of that partnership. If there is already a connection between these two venues on that brand, for example, then there is a long tail effect in both venues. The issue is often that we claim a lot of these big companies are global companies. Ultimately, they're very local companies.
Kaitlin Wilkes:Yes.
Chris Maffeo:They all work in silos. So even to get a phone call and to say, do you know anybody in Japan that we can bring in London or Berlin or whatever? They don't know. Then all of a sudden, it's like because of the beauty and the curse of Entree, this this kind of short term thing. It's like we need someone in ten days.
Chris Maffeo:And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, flights get expensive. Okay, let's get someone from Warsaw And I don't really know anybody, but there is this great bartender that I have a relationship with. And then all of a sudden, the original story was very interesting and grounded in KPIs as well. But then the actual result is like how it started, kind of.
Kaitlin Wilkes:And again, that comes down to planning. The best experiences when it comes to both doing a guest shift, having done them multiple times, having hosted them a few times. It comes down to who's owning that moment, right? If it's single brand funded, that brand should show up to that guest shift. That brand should send multiple people from their office so they understand the purpose of that guest shift.
Kaitlin Wilkes:If it's single brand funded, the brand needs to show up and support that bar. That's super important. The bar needs to take ownership for also pushing out the invite and being personal too. Sometimes we just put things into social media and expect people are going to show up, but can you just send a DM and be like, Hey, come along. I think that comes down to building partnerships as a brand to a bar, or a bar to a brand.
Kaitlin Wilkes:It's building authentic connections.
Chris Maffeo:We spoke about mainly big brands, but then we touched upon smaller brands. And the smaller brands also see these kind of relationships and advocacy into putting the foot in the door into an outlet. So what's usually your recommendation for smaller brands?
Kaitlin Wilkes:It's twofold. One, we need to understand that a small brand is very different than a multinational corporation. That is a misunderstanding right now in the on trade. It's like if the listing for the menu in The UK, we operate in menu listings, which I respect because that's going to market the bar and invest in the bar in some capacity. But a brand that is not even hitting 10,000 bottles cannot pay the £2,000 listing fee to be on menu because they'll do it twice and that's probably a quarter of their marketing budget and gone for the whole country.
Kaitlin Wilkes:It's incredibly hard to justify. If you have contracts with the big brands, I've had that and I respect and I understand it. Do they need to own every cocktail in the venue? Can they own 70% of the drink menu? Can you leave 30% for independent brands?
Kaitlin Wilkes:Can you put an independent brand next to the big guy because it fits and it works And you want to because you like the liquid, you like the ambassador, you like the business, you know, the business comes and supports you in the way that they can because they're small. That's the way I like to operate. As an independent contractor, maybe that doesn't totally live the values of the brand wanting 50 mils in the drink. And that's not always going to work. You've got to find a way to ease into it and find the right levers, especially when, you know, if we're working with like obscure spirits or building category, which I have experience in doing with Avalyn, for example.
Kaitlin Wilkes:It's like if they want to do a fiftyfifty Avalyn and Gin cocktail, who am I to say? It's the creativity of the bartender. Great that gin brand is global and Avalyn is next to it. Amazing. Yeah.
Kaitlin Wilkes:People are gonna know that global gin brand, Tanqueray, and they're gonna be like, don't know what Avalyn is, but I like Tanqueray, and I like elderflower, and I like apple, so I'll order that drink.
Chris Maffeo:Let's give it a try.
Kaitlin Wilkes:And I think that is a perfect example of how small brands can think more of selling cocktails and the responsibility of the big brands as well to help breed creativity because we don't want to see every bar having the same global contracts. And we're all making the same Grey Goose martinis, which are delicious, but is there more? Is there different? Yeah, of course there is. We can all alter the spirit in our own way.
Kaitlin Wilkes:It's this vicious circle of back and forth, but it's finding balance. It's trying to find the way that you can work with the smaller brands. We all started somewhere once. Right? We all entered the industry in our own way.
Kaitlin Wilkes:I understand some of these small brands will come and go. Some of these small brands will change direction. That's totally up to you as the bar owner, as the bar manager, to decide that if three years down the line you don't like that strategy of that brand anymore, or the brand ambassador changed. We're talking about a business of people here, Yeah. Big brands hire amazing ambassadors.
Kaitlin Wilkes:They spend four years, build the brand. That person gets burnt out or exhausted or bored. They change, that brand disappears off No. Look.
Chris Maffeo:Very often big companies have waves of brand ambassadors. Oh, there's some sometimes, like, it goes in waves because then, I don't know, Brown Forman is hiring brand ambassadors, and then William Grants is firing them, and then Bernard Ricard is hiring them. So it's also about understanding I mean, the big players must understand that they cannot own bars anymore because it's not the nineties anymore.
Kaitlin Wilkes:It's not.
Chris Maffeo:No. Because there is this thing. I'm coming from beer. And in beer, it used to be very much like, obviously, it's illegal to own the old tap. But Yeah.
Chris Maffeo:Yeah. Yeah. At the same time, there was this thing. This is a Heineken type of listing. This is a Asahi type of listing.
Chris Maffeo:This is a Molson Kouris type of listing, whatever. And then, like, couple of taps were free, and then people were entering. With back bars, nowadays, the best bars, the bartenders have done their due diligence. They know already what they want to have. And also, not all global brands are big in all countries.
Chris Maffeo:So there's usually five countries that make 80 to 90% of of the that brand. So ultimately, if you are a brand owner in a market, a brand that you may know in London as a huge brand in a country like Prague, Czech Republic, it might be very small and it might play on the same league as the local
Kaitlin Wilkes:Vital spirit, whatever it is.
Chris Maffeo:So it's very different because you cannot really cluster them. It goes back to what you were saying about relationship, but also about having clarity back to the KPI. What do you want to achieve from that listing? How can you have a partnership? And how do you see that listing in a bar or cocktail on the menu within the overall city strategy and country strategy?
Chris Maffeo:Otherwise, two cocktail on the menu, you burn the budget for the whole country and see you next year.
Kaitlin Wilkes:I would rather have 50 accounts pouring two to three bottles of my spirit a week because they love the cocktail. It sells a lot than 300 accounts that are selling what? 0.5 of a bottle, 0.25 of a bottle. It doesn't seem to add the same value to me. I would want to work with places that are going to actually move the product.
Kaitlin Wilkes:I think we forget about that. The listing is in 400 places, but do people know? Is it trained? I fear sometimes we try and grow so fast. We need to be everywhere all the time, and that's social media telling us that and being online too much going, Oh my God, I haven't done the thing in the fastest way.
Kaitlin Wilkes:And it's like, No, no. If we go slow with purpose and precision, it doesn't need to be everywhere all the time. It's like picking the right people and slowly growing it. But also as brands, we need to return that. If they've been pouring your spirit for four years and they've really not charged you a lot for it, at a certain point, the brand's got to give back to that stakeholder and be like, hey, ex bar manager, come view the distillery.
Kaitlin Wilkes:Come experience this amazing experience as a thank you, but also as a let's reignite our approach.
Chris Maffeo:Keep growing it.
Kaitlin Wilkes:You've been supporting us for four years. Let's keep building it because maybe it'll end up in more drinks. Maybe you'll mention it the next time you're doing an interview like this. That's the thing with advocacy. It's not something that you can just measure tomorrow.
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