Luxury drinks marketer Andrew Bardsley has been on an unconventional career journey to global brand director of prestige at Pernod Ricard Global Travel Retail. He shares his story with Tim Healey.
You worked at Diageo, then Chivas Brothers, and then high-value scotch at Pernod Ricard before becoming global brand director for the prestige brands. Please walk us through your career.
My first job was collecting glasses in a bar at the age of 15. I loved the hospitality environment and interacting with people. I also strongly believe in having fun at work. I still have fun at work today.
I thought I’d be in hospitality forever. I secured a place on Marriott Hotels’ graduate scheme, working for Marriott for four years while I was at University. I was destined for a career working in hotels and becoming a general manager. After 18 months in my post-graduate placement, working as a food and beverage manager in the hotel, aged 22, managing 70 staff, working 90 hours a week… I decided to consider alternatives.
Work/life balance was important to me, but equally, I wanted a job that would allow me to interact with people on a regular basis. Being passionate about food and drink, I joined Diageo as a business development executive. I visited nine pubs a day, talking about Guinness and selling the spirits portfolio. It was a proper ‘frying pan into the fire’ experience, but I learnt so much!
That was my introduction to the corporate world of drinks. Working with Guinness was great, as it is a truly well-loved brand. I had always had a passion for Scotland, from early childhood holidays, so I had always wondered how I could work in the world of whisky. I was fortunate enough to get a job on Diageo’s global malt whisky team in London, 14 years ago, and moved to London.
As part of the whisky brand team, I was working across a number of their brands, but I was predominantly focused on their special releases – high-quality, high-priced single malt whiskeys.
I had this amazing opportunity to get real insight into consumers who were buying these products: why they were buying, why they were willing to spend $500 to $1,000 on a bottle of whisky, and what was it that was sparking that interest?
Understanding what drives somebody to purchase is the part of my job that I love the most. I love nothing more than standing in an airport and watching people as they shop for alcohol, perfume or cosmetics. I love watching the interaction with staff, the display – whatever it is that where we’re showcasing our products on.
Some customers have a very clear path of purchase: “This is what I’m going to get. It’s going to take me two minutes. I’m going to be out the door, I’m going to go and have something to eat, and I’m going to get on my plane.”
Others are the complete polar opposite: “I’m going to spend around 20 minutes looking and considering. I really don’t know what I want. I know I need a present.”
I watch these customers and see how they interact with our ambassadors in-store. We can evaluate why they choose a specific product. Does the price or the packaging make a difference?
Over the last 11 years, I have worked for Pernod Ricard. I’ve worked across a number of different affiliates, including Chivas Brothers, which is our Scotch whisky business within Pernod Ricard. I then joined the world of travel retail the first time round, and then on Pernod Ricard in the UK. Finally, moving into my current role in the last year, as global brand director for our prestige portfolio. Our focus is on the prestige Scotch whisky and Cognac brands: how we bring these to market and how we really deliver on long-term brand equity, but equally, sell these in our beautiful retail environments. The remit is wide and includes everything from airports to cruise ships; airlines to border stores – anywhere that you can purchase duty-free.
Tony Leung and Eddie Peng combined forces in the recent Martell Cognac film that featured a race across rooftops.
Net sales last year for Pernod Ricard were €11.5 bn, and with a profit of €3.1bn. With your focus on prestige and the duty-free space. What does 2025 look like?
For me, 2025 is about getting back to the growth that we were seeing pre-COVID. We went from strong sales to literally zero overnight, as there were zero travellers for months. Travel is back. We are above 100% of pre-COVID travel numbers now.
Immediately after COVID, we saw a period of what we called “revenge travel” – where some travelers over-compensated for not being able to travel for some time. Things have normalized again, but people still love travel, which is really exciting for us. Of course, there are tough economic headwinds around the world that have affected spending power, but it’s our job to find innovative ways to engage, even during the most challenging of times.
We can see that our customers are not always willing to spend as much as they were five, six years ago. In the world of prestige, our job is to give them a reason to choose spirits or champagne within the prestige category – either purchasing for themselves or as gifts. Gifting is a key reason that people purchase the beautiful brands that we have in our portfolio.
A lot of my volume goes through Asia, but we also sell to those same customers when they travel. For example, a Chinese traveller may go to Paris or Singapore. So we activate in those destinations to make sure that the traveller sees our products and our portfolio wherever they travel. Our brands need to be seen in those key locations.
Much of the work we’ve been doing recently and will continue to do is getting back to the basics of understanding customer insight and sentiment so that our operations are future-facing and suitable for the world in 2025 and beyond.
Pernod Ricards’ London HQ.
What are the prestige brands at Pernod Ricard?
Within the world of cognac, you have Maison de Martell, which celebrated its 300-year birthday a few years back. With Martell, there’s a cognac for everyone – whether you have $40 or $20,000 to spend.
Wind that back: There’s one for $20,000?
I went quite low with that estimate! Within the world of luxury spirits, we have consumers of Martell Cognac who are looking for bottles that are truly unique and bring a scarcity that can’t be matched. We recently launched our 55-year-old Glenlivet for $55,000, because we know there are whisky connoisseurs who demand this type of release. These are some of the most precious liquids in our cellars, housed and aged for decades. When we enter the world of ultra-prestige, that’s where we cater to all budgets.
There’s a considerable demand for these products, and what is really fascinating is understanding why people want them and what they do with them. Often it is for their own consumption, and also for gifting or collecting. When you gift a prestige bottle, there’s an element of status within that gifting: “This is what I think of you. I’m gifting you this wonderful, beautiful product because I can afford to.”
How is your team structured?
We have business units worldwide, including an office in Hong Kong, Miami, Sydney and of course London. My team’s role is to develop the products and activations that will excite our consumers, and there is nothing better than seeing them go live in a fabulous space in an airport somewhere around the world. We work closely with our teams in those offices as well as our support teams, who deliver knowledge and expertise to help us make more informed decisions. We are very lucky in that regard.
For example, we recently launched a new product for Martell, Martell Noblige Noir, which is exclusive to travel retail – so you can only purchase this when passing through an airport or border store. We developed that product with our friends at the brand company in Paris, over a period of about 12 months, working on everything from the packaging to the commercial proposition and even how we activate it: the merchandising look and feel, the consumer journey in store – all the way through to the media campaign and the digital campaign.
Next, we passed that on to our team in Hong Kong, whose job it was to launch it in Hong Kong International Airport – which we did on October 1. They had exclusivity for four weeks. Then we showcase it around the world, across airports and in our Martell boutiques. As we’re driving a global proposition, our brands have global scope, so our centralized marketing team ensures the consistency that we need, but equally that each proposition has global appeal. Consumer needs in Singapore or Sao Paulo are very different, and we need to be sensitive to that.
We also need beautiful execution on the ground from our teams all over the world. There may be nuance if you are in Sao Paulo or Singapore – a slightly different consumer journey perhaps – but actually, you’re still going to see a level of consistency if you fly between those two destinations.
Some people travel all the time for work, but many people travel once or twice a year. When I’m on holiday, I adopt a different mode of spending. I’m going to treat myself. I think: “I’ve had a busy year, I deserve this.”
One of the reasons we develop these exclusive products is to present that opportunity to our customers. We’re giving people something enhanced, different and unique. We like to see it as your reward for travelling, and there’s an opportunity there to present customers with something that they have never seen before.
The $55,000 Glenlivet 55
What’s your first memory of a marketing success that you were part of, where you felt: this is the role for me.
I think it has to be working on innovation products for scotch whisky. Innovating a product within specific parameters – be that consumer demand or price point, and then 18-24 months later, seeing that product on the shelf and seeing someone buy it for the first time. It still makes me smile to this day: there’s nothing better. I just love it.
There are successes, but there are failures too: you don’t win on every innovation.
But going through that journey, talking to consumers in research, understanding what they’re looking for, working with design agencies on the packaging or what the merchandising might look like – going through that entire process to selling, and seeing customers buying these products – it all makes me incredibly happy. I feel very lucky that I’m passionate about what I do as a job. I travel with my kids now, and I walk into a spirit store, and I’ll recognize bottles on the shelves that I helped to bring to market, and they get that buzz now too.
Back to your question: when I first did that – and I first saw a product that I had a hand in bringing to life – on the shelf – it was some 20 years ago now – I remember thinking: this is for me. This is the industry for me. But also – this world of marketing: the ability to take an insight or take an idea on the long journey from concept to the shelf, and then seeing that idea still being manufactured and sold years later – that is something I really love.
What’s the value of creativity and great brand advertising?
It is everything. I encourage my team to use creativity to enhance every customer touch point—from typical advertising campaigns, big screen displays or out-of-home displays to in-store displays at the point of purchase. I work in what might be considered quite a traditional world. Scotch whisky, in particular, has quite a traditional background. In most people’s minds, the idea of whisky is a man drinking a glass of whisky in his leather Chesterfield sofa in front of a fire.
It’s our job to change that image and show how versatile the category is. Show how everyone now drinks whisky, and as marketers, we need to cater to that. We need to consider how we reach a wider audience. And we can do that across multiple media channels: from social to out-of-home to digital. A lot of travel arrangements are made online, and building campaigns with this in mind gives us the opportunity to connect with consumers before they have even walked into the airport.
We have the opportunity to leverage creativity to connect with our customers before, during, and after their travel. I rely heavily on the team to bring new ideas to the table, and if we believe they have legs, we’ll work on them together.
Wherever people travel, there’s the opportunity to buy Pernod Ricard products.
What initiative, delivered on your watch, are you the most proud?
In 2018, we redesigned almost all of our prestige portfolio. We took the idea of the power of the individual brands, but also the power of bringing those brands together and building a category activation that connected the entire portfolio.
In doing so, we explored fresh ideas in terms of how the consumer journey worked. By showcasing those brands under one umbrella – our portfolio – we knew that in every single region of the world, whether you flew from Heathrow to LA or Singapore to Shanghai, you were going to see our portfolio and those brands. Customers and consumers responded incredibly well to this. It made a considerable difference to brand perception and drove sales performance. I’m really proud of the work that was carried out from insight to execution, and knowing that it drove consumer feeling, not just brand equity.
It’s very easy to put a product for $1,000 on a shelf. But actually selling that product and giving customers a reason to pick it up takes a lot more work.
And we were able to do that. We gave people a reason: an understanding of the benefit of picking that bottle up and either gifting it to somebody or having it as part of their collection. It was game-changing.
Out-of-home airport advertising for Martell Chanteloup XXO Cognac.
What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?
People think that overnight successes are commonplace. They aren’t.
When people see a brand with a successful product, many think, “Oh gosh, they’ve been so lucky; they’re going to make a fortune on that product.” There’s often a perception that it all comes very easily and that it is simple to make it a huge commercial success this way.
What people don’t see is the years and years of consumer research, testing, product development, and packaging development – all of which are required to make successful products. People don’t see the trial and error and the mistakes that came before – the products that didn’t have the success that you wanted them to have – the blood, sweat and tears.
My friends and family think my job is sitting in an office tasting whisky all day. The reality of what we do is very different. Of course, I get to taste the product, but bringing a luxury product from inception to sales is a long journey with many distinct stages.
What advice might you give your younger self if you could go back in time?
I am in this role because I’ve moved between the worlds of both commercial business and marketing. My career was not the more traditional ascent through marketing roles: assistant brand manager, brand manager, senior brand manager, marketing manager. Instead, I worked in the commercial world and in trade marketing. Exposure to commercial operations has been fundamental for me to continue being a good marketer. Without a level of commercial acumen, I don’t think you can be as successful as you want to be.
The advice I would give my younger self is do as many different things as possible and take risks around moving into parts of the business or company that will put you outside of your comfort zone.
Say that you have done brand marketing, advertising campaigns – maybe you have brought new products to the world: working in trade marketing for two years and understanding how to bring a product to life at the point of purchase in a domestic market or in an airport environment will give you so much new experience and insight. Should you return to it, you will inevitably do your brand job with renewed rigor.
What question would you like me to ask the next senior marketer when I interview them?
Everyone makes mistakes. What’s your biggest and proudest failure – and what did you learn from it?
Airport duty-free displays promoting Glenlivet at Changi, Singapore.
I still fundamentally believe that there is a touch of bias against creative people and the creative industries. I think there is a belief that you need to have a strong, purely commercial and financial background to have any success on boards, or to have any ability to deliver. And I think that is wrong. But it is why you don’t see as many CMOs on boards.
I’m fortunate to have a commercial background and commercial insight. But even if I didn’t, I think the consumer insight and creativity needed to reach them are fundamental to any business, and I would argue that is why a CMO deserves a seat at the board table.
If there is one thing you know about marketing, it is…
It’s not easy, but it’s bloody great fun. As marketers, we can overthink it sometimes. We can be stressed, have tough deadlines to hit and targets to meet… but fundamentally, I do this job because it makes me smile. I also have a team that makes me smile. They inspire me and give me the strength and energy to keep going and be passionate about what I do. I do my best to have fun at work and ensure that my team has fun, too.
You might die tomorrow, so make it worth your while. Worth Your While is an independent creative agency that helps brands do spectacular things people like to talk about. www.agency.
This interview has already appeared in The Drum. Discover the best campaigns, industry insights and interviews from world-leading marketers, creatives and more.
