IT WAS THE DANCING THAT CLINCHED IT.
When Allied Domecq convened its worldwide work session on Malibu Rum last fall in London, it was the first time many of the marketing managers and agency folks met each other. They spent the morning in a theatre reviewing strategy and the afternoon in a bar (brainstorming, actually) — and by the time dinner was over, folks were swapping recipes and showing pictures of the kids. When they started to dance, Nick Garland knew the team had gelled.
“You know it’s been a successful meeting when the French start dancing,” laughs Garland, VP-Malibu at London-based Allied Domecq.
AD celebrates its first anniversary with Malibu this month as it rolls out the brand’s first-ever global below-the-line work in an estimated $40 million to $60 million worldwide push this year. AD weaves promotions, events and print with existing TV advertising for a consistency across all communication channels, and — more difficult — consistency worldwide in all markets. The process involved several countries’ brand managers from the outset for local buy-in, and by the time it was done, AD’s top brass had bought in to Malibu’s toolbox as a sterling example for all its brands.
The toolbox is a collection of below-the-line activities from P-O-P and on-premise games to elaborate events. It’s built in part on AD research that identifies six consumer groups by person, occasion and want — known by the punchy acronym “POW” — and suggests how, when and where to best reach different audience segments. Malibu brand managers collaborated to choose the right POW for their brand, then helped build promotion ideas around that. “It’s not just the global brand team in a vacuum creating this,” says Senior Brand Manager-U.S. Susan Kilgore. There’s leeway for local execution, but all major initiatives pass back through the agency’s central group for consistency.
AD is one of the first corporations to hire a global promotions agency of record, 141 Worldwide, which serves as lead agency on all Malibu’s marketing, including advertising. (Sister agency Bates places media and handles some creative via regional offices.) 141 is also promotions AOR for AD’s nine global brands and hundreds of smaller brands.
When AD began to centralize marketing in fall 2001, it irked some regional managers who were used to autonomy. Garland had an unusual opportunity to start fresh with a well-established brand, but he needed to make Malibu’s managers part of the process, or risk half-hearted execution.
“We’re fighting the ‘not invented here’ and ‘it’ll never work in my market’ syndromes,” says 141’s U.S. Creative Director Thierry Anglade. “If people don’t own an idea, their first impulse is to reject it.”
At the same time, AD has revamped its U.S. operations to shift sales staff (and spending) locally, rather than nationally. It began 2003 with decentralized divisions for north, south, and “control” states, with more sales reps handling AD’s full portfolio, and lower inventories to reverse an earlier retail glut.
Malibu’s sales are about $150 million worldwide; its biggest markets are the U.S., U.K., France, Spain and the Netherlands, so those brand managers and marketing managers helped set strategy and build the toolbox. “They act as a leadership team, working loosely rather than in formal board meetings,” Garland says. “What we create for those markets is likely to work in secondary markets too.”
First work broke in March in Spain. The U.K., Australia and Netherlands begin toolbox-driven promos by June, while the U.S. breaks first toolbox work in September, the beginning of fiscal 2004. (Long lead times didn’t give U.S. managers enough time to use the toolbox to plan spring and summer work, so that P-O-P uses old artwork.)
AD and 141 let PROMO watch over their shoulders through several months of planning and refining. Here’s how the year went — on both sides of the International Dateline.
Malibu changes hands
AD took control of Malibu from Diageo in May 2002, part of an $880 million deal that included Mumm Cuvee Napa (AD already owned Mumm Champagne). Malibu joined AD’s portfolio as its ninth core brand (and third most-profitable) just as the $5.7 billion company boosted wine and spirits marketing 34% to about $750 million worldwide. Consumer Planning Director Sian Wilkins migrated with Malibu to serve as corporate memory. “She brought a depth of understanding of the trademark and the strategy” that Diageo had painstakingly developed, Garland says. That precise strategy — “Malibu makes life less serious” — was one of the assets that made AD want the brand. After all, it has helped increase Malibu sales every year since 1995, including a 32% jump in volume from 1999 to 2001.
Malibu’s core target is young adults from legal drinking age to five years older (21-26 in the U.S.). Faced with first jobs, first apartments, first cars and the like, that audience often takes itself too seriously — and knows it. So Malibu’s message is: Lighten up. Don’t take life too seriously. Its tagline, “Seriously easy going,” pitches Malibu as exotic but laid-back enough to help young adults loosen up.
One unusual advantage is that Malibu’s target audience is the same in all its key markets. That sets the stage for a consistent message worldwide.
“The curious thing is that the life stage of the target audience is scarily similar: They’re young adults shifting from school to first job and the like,”says Brand Manager-U.K. Jeremy Hill. “They might be French, Spanish or English, but there are a hell of a lot of similarities between those consumers.”
“That level of fit is unusual,” adds Garland. “Most brands grow in a more staggered way.”
Malibu’s Caribbean provenance lends a laid-back tone that’s clear in spots AD inherited from Diageo (via agencies Lowe and J. Walter Thompson, both London). TV spots shot in the West Indies showed islanders acting like uptight Westerners: A woman complains that the bus is 43 seconds late; boaters compete for a parking spot at the dock; fishermen train in a military-style boot camp. AD liked the handful of funny, effective spots, but promotions were disjointed and print and radio were “less consistently good,” Garland says. AD’s first job was to isolate what works, and build on it. “It’s a marketer’s instinct to change things, but we were cognizant about not dropping what was good,” Garland says.
AD planned to drive growth by extending the TV campaign (in all markets but the U.S., where liquor ads have been off broadcast TV since 1968) and carrying the theme below the line. Diageo had run a wide range of consumer and trade promos through local agencies, so activities “looked and felt different from the ads,” Garland says. “We saw an aggregation value if we improved the connection between ads and promotion. We’d have more impact with consistent messaging at all touchpoints. It’s an approach we’re trying to embrace with all our brands.”
That prompted AD to hire its first global promotions agency of record, London-based 141 Worldwide, in October 2001. Hiring one shop globally “is an indication of how seriously we take below-the-line work,” says Garland, who credits AD Chief Marketing Officer Kim Manley with championing integration. “Having one voice, one agency working through the system is more effective than several agencies.”
AD first tapped 141 Worldwide for all below-the-line work on its global brands (and others in its 370-brand stable). AD consolidated from 139 promo shops in a massive multi-brand review; 141 also picked up ad assignments for Ballantine’s, Tia Maria, and new launch Tia Lusso, as well as Malibu.
“It takes a brave client to move from 139 agencies to 141,” jokes 141 International Director Patrick Hanson-Lowe.
With 91 offices in 57 countries, 141 has solid global infrastructure few can match. “Other agency networks are more a confederation than a network,” says Hanson-Lowe. Plus, 141 has strong on-premise and duty-free experience with British American Tobacco — crucial to a liquor brand like Malibu, whose young audience buys more in bars than at retail.
141 proved itself to AD on its crown jewel Ballantine’s, the estimated $285 million whisky brand that 141 helped sister Bates win in 1998. Then 141 ran a pan-European Music Fusion promo in 1999, and in 2001 built a promo toolbox for Ballantine’s in a heroic three months. Ballantine’s “Go Play” campaign broke in May 2002 with ads and promos in 50 countries. Many retailers bought in on the strength of “Go Play” marketing without additional trade dollars. Ballantine’s uses its toolbox in 56 markets now, with successful promos pooled in an Intranet- and CD-based catalog that all regions share.
“141 began with the concept and it was nourished by every country. Good ideas travel more easily anyway,” says Anglade. “Everyone owns the concept and at the same time, no one does.”
Malibu followed the same inclusive process. AD hired Garland in August to take the helm of the brand. He had been an independent consultant working mostly in financial services after an eight-year stint at Diageo (though not on Malibu there). Brand teams were desperate for promotion materials, since they have long lead times and work was put on hold while Malibu was on the block.
AD bought Malibu with an eye on line extensions, but planned to spend a year building its foundation first. It ran inherited promos through summer 2002 while Garland, Wilkins, and Malibu Global Brand Manager Lucy Mitchell devised a strategic brief using Malibu’s audience and ads as a starting point, then invited marketing managers and 141 regional creatives to London in September.
The regions meet
They gathered for the morning in a West End theatre and for the afternoon in The Globe, a neighborhood bar in Notting Hill, home to many Caribbean immigrants. It was the perfect setting to make the team feel like consumers in a Malibu mood. “It was the first time we could get under the skin of the brand,” says Garland. “It was crazy, man,” jokes Hill.
Everyone got sunglasses and flip-flops. Lunch was curried goat. There were rules: “Relax.” “Don’t look at the time.” “Take off your shoes.” (Some of the French and American creatives refused — “Gucci loafers and Prada,” colleagues teased later.) No one got titles on their nametags. “The more you can take hierarchy out of it, the better a group works together,” Garland explains. Anglade puts it this way: “You break the cycle of titles, of who’s wearing a tie, who is an old fart, when you don’t know who is who. To get the best clarification, we make it as blurred as we can.”
Many folks were meeting for the first time and didn’t know who was the client and who was from the agency. That pushed the group beyond preconceived ideas of how clients and agencies treat each other and personalities came through more naturally.
“I hadn’t been through a process like it, with a large number of people from the agency, both local and international, and a large number from the key markets around the world actually in one place at the start of the process,” says Hill, who expected more lecture and less hands-on development. “Working as a large group was a very interesting process.”
The team reviewed brand strategy, competitors’ performance and ads, Malibu’s creative brief, regional priorities and consumer research.
“The starting point was bringing together knowledge of how consumers perceive the brand in each market,” says Brand Manager-France Christophe Prat. “We found out how consumers are very consistent [worldwide]. That was a great starting point because it was the first time we met each other in the same group, and we found out that not only do we have a consistent brand, we have consistent consumers.”
Malibu’s penetration and image vary by region, so some countries want to boost current users’ frequency while others need to court new users — including the U.S., where 2002 sales were a modest 940,000 cases, per Adams Handbook Advance 2003. U.K. drinkers see Malibu as a feminine drink; Spaniards think it’s hip. AD wants to even out image variations while addressing local marketing goals — spur trial, or simplify mixability, for example.
Buy-in has been a mixed bag for AD in the past. European managers liked a plan but those in the U.S. didn’t, or Asia-Pacific was excited but Europe wasn’t. AD brass hopes to even that out too.
“In a global meeting, you see the diversity of regulations in the liquor industry. You see just how differently the [countries] are allowed to operate,” Kilgore says. Regional variations were addressed early. For instance, off-premise is much more important in the U.S. than in Europe. This first meeting let Kilgore raise her hand right away and ask for off-premise options, “so we got what we needed at the end in the toolbox,” she says.
The group broke into about a dozen teams and spent the afternoon brainstorming on- and off-premise ideas.
“The goal isn’t to crack it in three hours, but to make everyone feel the brand in a more tangible way,” Anglade says. “Working together, we develop ideas in the same direction and work from a common platform.”
Hill calls it “a bit of a brain dump.” A breakout group might be one staffer each from Allied Domecq, local 141, and international 141, from the U.S., Spain, and the U.K. — “a real melting pot of experience,” he says.
“We occasionally changed groups, using different expertise,” adds Brand Manager-Spain Juan Manuel Sanchez. “What helped bridge us was that everything was a discussion, everything was agreed to when people were convinced it was the best thing to do.”
On-premise was especially important. “We build this brand from the bar backwards,” says Hanson-Lowe. “If you get it right at the bar, it will stick with people.”
“Malibu is a young person’s brand,” Garland explains. “Plus, on-premise is usually tied more strongly to advertising because it’s about image, whereas off-premise tends to be about the offer. On-premise, people are in the moment.”
The ideas spilled out easily from the Hawaiian-shirted crew: Events could help AD dodge competitors that might second-guess Malibu’s plans. Some could cater to several key accounts at once. Off-premise P-O-P could reinforce Malibu’s message in bars. Beaches. Sunsets. Slow-motion Caribbean time. Surfing. 141 collected them all.
“We don’t want to come off as a slick or pretentious brand; it’s about leaving behind the troubles of the day,” says 141 International Creative Director Danny Kellard. “We took the position that the ads would show why Malibu makes life less serious, and promotion would show how.” Anglade adds: “Our role is to bring the brand strategy to life in consumers’ mouths.”
Below-the-line is “either harder or very much more expensive” to convey the message, Garland says. “The easiest way to do it is simple communication. If it’s not easy to run, the trade won’t want to do it, and if it’s not easy to understand, it won’t resonate with consumers anyway.”
Meanwhile, AD was relaunching Malibu in Australia. That campaign, begun last October, was the brand’s first full support in Australia in 10 years, with on-premise events, text messaging and a sweepstakes. 141 International worked closely with 141’s Sydney office to make sure the fall campaign would be consistent with Malibu’s global work slated for spring.
By the end of the day, AD had a long list of “well-worked but still raw” ideas, Garland says. 141’s local offices divvied them up, choosing ideas they felt especially passionate about to take home and flesh out. “It was quite weird because that’s how the meeting finished: Here’s a bunch of ideas, here are some rich territories and that was the end of it,” Hill says. Discussion segued to drinks, and the first global meeting officially ended.
That’s when the dancing began.
Homework
Local 141 offices spent several days working up their portions of the brainstorm. Back in London, Kellard consolidated all the work under three platforms: “Surf,” “Sunset” and “Seriously Easy Going.”
“Advertising shows why and below-the-line shows how to be easy going,” Kellard says. “So, okay, make it easy for consumers to have fun. Give them flip flop coasters and ping pong balls. Offer seriously easy prizes — they just have to ask for one.”
141 staffers consulted with colleagues working on BAT, swapping AD’s on-premise smarts for BAT’s off-premise expertise. While ideas took shape under Kellard’s hand, local 141 teams kept adding to the mix, swapping e-mail and phone calls with the London team.
“International communication is not easy but it lets everyone contribute,” says Anglade.
AD’s regional marketing managers weren’t involved in this phase of 141’s creative development, but AD’s Mitchell sent weekly e-mail updates to keep them in the loop as work progressed.
Meanwhile, a multi-discipline team of 141 parent Cordiant took on Malibu. Its members — from Bates and 141 to p.r. shop Bulletin and interactive shop XM and design shop Fitch — met every two weeks to supplement the core team’s efforts. The group mulled tidbits about Malibu — it’s singer Macy Gray’s favorite drink, for instance — to see what was worth projecting globally as AD seeks innovative routes to reach consumers. The team “makes it easy for clients to tap all Cordiant resources,” says 141 International Account Manager Melissa Hopkins.
Regrouping in London
With the ideas sketched out under three potential themes, it was time to reassemble the team — with all brand managers on board this time, while 141 regional creatives stayed home. Fourteen of AD’s brand and marketing managers reconvened in London in late October with a consumer segmentation study and a fine-tooth comb. They worked at the trendy Metropolitan, a sunny restaurant dressed in Malibu colors and props.
“It’s a pleasure to work in that open environment,” Garland says. “A lot of the people are new to the brand, so there’s not a lot of baggage, and the level of cooperation is really impressive.”
The team literally tried on all three platforms with role-playing games and devising P-O-P to see whether Seriously Easy Going, Surf or Sunset was the best platform. Joining the process were European marketing managers who handle all AD brands in several countries. They brought a new perspective.
Malibu also benefited from the $10 million consumer segmentation study that AD conducted in 2002 to define audience by person, occasion and want (yes, POW). A survey of 40,000 consumers worldwide set the formula: “Person” is defined by age and gender; “Occasion” considers location for drinking, and whether folks are also eating; “Want” addresses drinkers’ mood. Using these three variables, AD calculated 192 POW combinations — then zeroed in on six distinct consumer groups. Malibu’s team ran through scenarios to find the one group best suited to Malibu’s position. They even staged a mock trial with multi-national teams debating which consumer segment was the best fit. (The research serves all AD brands, and could suggest innovative brand extensions.)
The group toured eight Malibu-friendly bars across London, chatting with consumers that 141 had recruited for casual research. Consumers were all different nationalities, and meeting them stirred enthusiasm among AD managers. (One staffer even swapped phone numbers with fellow countrymen.)
It didn’t take long to settle on Seriously Easy Going for the platform. “We didn’t have to choose just one, but it was quite conclusively clear that ‘Easy’ was the one,” Garland says. “It wasn’t even marginal.”
It wasn’t even translatable. There’s no way to express “seriously easy going” in Spanish. “We decided we know what’s behind the platform, so we can have the same look, same feel, same spirit,” Sanchez says. “There’s no tagline, but the philosophy is still there.”
There was other research to share, too. AD’s France team showed how it found consumers’ “passion points,” and the group discussed which emotional link was best for Malibu. “If we’re going to link Malibu to a passion point of our Identity Seekers, we want to be sure only Malibu can fill that territory and tomorrow a competitor or another brand outside the competitive set of cannot go into it,” says Prat. “One of best things that came from research was to get together people from trade marketing, marketing and advertising with 141 all in the same room expressing which passion point best mixes with Malibu.”
The other top markets adopted France’s technique and found their consumers’ passion points were spookily similar. The research “opened to us a path to speak in a common language,” Sanchez says. It also lent an image-based hook for promotions. Past campaigns were volume-driven, but “now we’d try to make it more emotional,” Prat says. “It would still be about volume, but we would try also to build an experience around the product.”
By this second gathering the group had become one of AD’s “global communities,” sharing resources (such as P-O-P printing, or premiums) to save money and improve consistency. “It’s fantastic to see smaller markets show what they’ve done on smaller budgets, and bigger markets pick up those ideas,” Hopkins says.
By all accounts, the team approach was working. The regions — even those that had been disgruntled in the past — were enthusiastic and encouraging. (Some of AD’s regional managers had thought of 141 International as cops and bristled to think the agency’s core team would force a campaign on them.) The agency — nurturing its own delicate balance of power between the central 141 International crew and 141’s regional offices — found more cooperation and less territorialism. And the dynamic between client and agency felt more productive, too. 141 staffers felt flattered when Garland commented, “I forget you’re the agency — I think of you as one of us.”
Meanwhile, 141 spent early November testing 10 new TV spots in Spain — the European version of playing in Peoria — before testing in the U.K., and tested new radio and print in Chicago and Miami. 141 planned to shoot new TV in February to distribute to markets in March. That would accommodate some countries’ long lead times — in Canada, for instance, liquor marketers must give ads to the government liquor board five months before airing.
A box is born
Kellard and crew collated promotion campaign outlines, premiums and signage sketches, photos, backdrops and color guides with target-audience profiles and voila: The toolbox was ready. It outlined Malibu’s positioning, gave talking points for pitching promos to on- and off-premise accounts, and included artwork guidelines for P-O-P (posters, table tents, coasters, swizzle sticks) and suggestions for events, sweepstakes, on-pack offers, off-premise displays, even a party-in-a-box. The toolbox gives a detailed definition of “easy” to avoid misinterpretations. It also defines what Malibu isn’t, to dispel assumptions about what belongs. Still, the toolbox is a “light hand on the tiller” that leaves lots of room for local leeway in execution, Garland says. It’s detailed enough to keep Seriously Easy Going clear, but flexible enough to let local 141 offices tailor promos to the hometown crowd. “It’s not an all-encompassing list, but as ideas come up, the toolbox gives guidance for what will work.
“The more we could cultivate a look, the easier we can get the message across,” Garland explains. “We’re always selling in someone else’s environment, so the look and feel need to be consistent but flexible enough to [let regional managers] design activities to suit [retail] customers.” Kilgore adds: “It’s not a mandate; it’s more of a guideline on how to apply whatever is feasible locally.”
The global playbook spurs creativity — a must for trade buy-in, says Prat: “This platform is quite emotional. That’ll be a hell of a lot of help for us to deliver mechanics which bring some traffic to on- or off-trade.” That could boost on-premise buy-in, and off-premise compliance.
“‘Through the line’ is only an overused buzzword unless you’ve got something like the toolbox for a consistent approach, so consumers get the same message whether it’s advertising or in the bar,” Hill says. “The power of the toolbox is to bring advertising to life so when people walk into an outlet, they start to live the Malibu life.”
AD’s management board invited Wilkins to show them the toolbox after they’d heard about the development process. They were impressed.
In January and February, Hanson-Lowe and Kellard traveled to 30 of 141’s local offices as well as AD regional offices to deliver the toolbox. “We can get so caught up in virtual account management because we do so much by e-mail,” Hopkins says. “We urge people to pick up the phone and be friendly.”
Hanson-Lowe and Kellard told AD regional offices that the toolbox was created by Malibu’s top five markets. “We can tell them the toolbox has global buy-in,” Hopkins says. The top five have seen it grow from sketches to finished art, so “people feel they’re involved in the process, not just given a global kit.”
Campaign ideas are anonymous, too.
“When we present to the client here [in the U.S.], we don’t say where an idea came from; it’s what we think is best for the brand,” says Anglade. “We don’t give geographic provenance because that cracks the barrier of thinking global and acting local.”
An Intranet “warehouse” of ads, artwork and images lets 141’s central team track what work regions pick up (and when) to see what’s in market worldwide at any given time.
Meanwhile, design shop Fitch, 141’s sister agency, developed brand guidelines, as it does for all AD’s global brands.
Serious work
All regions had CD-Rom and Intranet versions of the toolbox by February. As campaigns come to market, AD adds notes on successes (and failures) to its kit.
“It’s an organic beast. It has to take on a life of its own,” Garland says. “It’s not an all-encompassing list, but it gives guidance as new ideas come up.”
AD gauges results by the usual measurements of sales, volume and incremental profit, but it also measures promos’ impact on consumers.
Brand managers like the consistency they’re getting now.
“The markets were going in different directions — not for lack of wanting to do things together. They just didn’t have a vehicle that pulled them together and said, ‘This is the look and feel we all agreed on. You can go away and work up an activity but it needs to look and feel this way,’” Hill says. Prat adds, “I could have the same promotional periods as the U.S. and the Ukraine, and since we have the same target, if we’re going to bring Malibu to consumers similarly, we can globalize what we want to do and think together.”
And if it succeeds, they’ll all dance.
CREATIVITY is like a Christmas tree. At top is the strategic brief; then the work fans out to brand managers and agency creatives in all regions for brainstorming. Ideas are pulled back for the central team to refine them; then out it all goes again to the regions for local touches. That’s Patrick Hanson-Lowe’s analogy, anyway.
DYNAMICS
Some marketers bully or belittle agencies. That’s changing as clients become a smaller percentage of total billings, and don’t have that clout anymore. Besides, mutual respect fosters better work. The trick for a global network — and a key part of 141 and AD’s mandate — is to be partners on all levels.
Promotion agency as lead horse
“Brands with less money can do better with promotions than with advertising. So they need a below-the-line agency ongoing, but only need an ad agency occasionally.”
Patrick Hanson-Lowe
141 Worldwide
Network
