“Beliefs and values that have held sway for thousands of years will be questioned as never before.”
~Carol P. Christ
Diageo is a global liquor and spirits giant.
An orthodoxy is a widely held belief about what drives success for a company or for an industry. For instance, you (or your management) may believe that:
- to grow your business means that you have to do so at the expense of your competition (grow market share);
- to maximize sales, you need to own the major holidays, events, or usage occasions;
- men are the purchase decision makers for your products at retail.
An orthodoxy is just a fancy term for prevailing wisdom, and it’s usually rooted in past experience. After all, leaders of businesses, be them marketing leaders or not, usually gain their positions of influence through delivering past results.
But what would happen if you turned the words “past experience” into a negative? Perhaps you’d call it a dogma. Then what you would have is a “established belief or doctrine…[that] is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioner or believers.”
What then happens when some heretic within the company (our outside the company) suggests that you challenge the beliefs you and the industry hold so sacredly, or better yet, gains information that refutes them? What happens when you gain information that suggests that the world is changing, or has changed right before your eyes?
What happens is that you unlock a new world of opportunity and you get to innovate!
Diageo is a $14 billion global company that owns and markets many of the #1 alcohol brands within various segments. It’s brand lineup is staggeringly impressive: Smirnoff is the #1 vodka in the world, Johnnie Walker is the #1 whisky, Jose Cuervo the #1 tequilla, Bailey’s the #1 liqueur, and Guinness the #1 stout.
Diageo Expects Sales Growth After Focusing on Shoppers
Rather than resting on its laurels as the undisputed industry leader, 3 years ago, Diageo embarked on a mission to better understand who buys these products, why they buy them, and just as importantly, what stops them from buying them. It created a shopper marketing team that set out to deepen its understanding of consumer shopping behavior.
Generating new consumer insights is not the only way to challenge your orthodoxies, but it’s a foundational marketing practice that often will.
So what did Diageo learn that were assuredly “aha” moments within the company?
- Women are the primary shoppers for spirits and liquors, not men, as had been assumed;
- People buy spirits and liquor for special occasions, but they define special occasions much more broadly and frequently than holiday and birthday celebrations, as had been assumed. Informal, spontaneous group events such as dinners, porch parties, or backyard grilling were just as likely to drive purchase occasions;
- Many people are intimidated to buy spirits and liquors because they don’t have a go-to repertoire of cocktail recipes. They don’t know what complimentary products they would need to be able to serve a cocktail to a friend or guest;
- Beyond the consumer insights, Diageo also learned to better understand its retailer’s needs in selling and marketing its products, that they were willing to partner to sell the category, rather than to assume its dominant position allowed it to assert is clout.
These new insights then led to a wide variety of programs that were tested with its retail partners and validated in market. They include:
Supplementing big holiday events where spirits and liquor are traditionally purchased with more year-round marketing;- Development of programs to educated and take away the intimidation factor, such as “Simply Cocktails” which is a display and merchandising area where consumers are given options in how much complexity they are willing to use in order to create a cocktail;
- Diageo has increased the tools available to retailers to help them succeed in this category. For instance, they provide food pairing and cocktail suggestion ideas that many consumers seek before they begin a shopping trip and when they visit the retailers’ website. Additionally, retailers have the option of customizing the displays or using their own nomenclature, and selecting merchandising modules that fit their store size.
So what have been the results?
- Diageo says that it’s seeing double digit growth in its brand sales;
- It also says that it’s growing overall category sales, which its retail partners no doubt care about more;
- Presumably, as reflected in more sales, consumers are realizing the benefits of these programs, and ultimately, when you make your consumers happy, they reward you with sales.
Marketing has been changing rapidly as consumers gain greater control of the messages they are willing to listen to, in their ability find the information that’s important to them, and then to spread ideas and information through social media and word of mouth.
Are you learning from your target customers how you can connect with them in more valuable ways, and in doing so, being open to challenging your own orthodoxies?
