Welcome to your new job.
What a challenge. What an opportunity.
You are the steward of some of the world’s greatest liquor brands: Jack Daniel’s, Old Forester, and Chambord, to name just three.
But your appointment comes at a moment of serious peril for the company.
Brown-Forman’s stock is down 60% in the last five years.
Sazerac Brands launched a $15B takeover bid.
A family letter has been circulating, accusing the board of rewarding failure.
And the core brand, Jack Daniel’s, has been declining.
It’s easy to see this as inheriting a business in crisis.
But you really inherit a brand in crisis. Not the entire portfolio. The brand.
Jack Daniel’s.
The most famous brand in American whiskey.
One that has been drifting for years.
Fix the brand. And the business will get better…fast.
Your first instinct will be to move fast and fix things.
Resist this.
Motion Doesn’t Equal Impact
You can’t look at the business and see a lack of activity or ideas.
The RTD expansion with Coke. Hard tea. McLaren collaborations. Bonded Series.
…Blackberry Jack Daniel’s.
You even have a guiding motto: “Superior innovation and bold route-to-consumer strategies.”
I don’t know what that means either.
This is action.
But beware: I call this the Bud Light Effect.
The Bud Light Effect is the moment when your sales are declining, you are out of touch with your customers, and, instead of trying to understand them better, you look at the data and start launching products left and right.
Bud Light chased the market with flavors and line extensions… but sales kept sliding.
The product line grew. The brand shrank.
I’m sure all of it can be justified with data.
But none of it answers a simple question: Why should customers drink our beer?
That leads me to ask you, can your team answer the question about Jack Daniel’s?
Drinking Culture is Complicated
There’s a lot of data on drinking habits.
The data is mixed.
Gallup says that drinking is down. IWSR says that Gen Z drinking participation rose. Rabobank tells you that financial pressure matters.
…RTDs are growing while spirits decline.
Mixed data isn’t the problem. It is a warning.
Data tells you what happened. But it does not tell you why.
Research is messier.
That’s why it is important.
When you have data, you don’t have insight.
You are making decisions based on the past.
You fail to ask about the conditions you’d need for history to repeat itself.
This is why research matters.
You don’t need more information. You need better insights.
This shifts the question from “Why are we losing drinkers?” to “Why are people drinking or not?”
Subtle…but a big difference.
The Decision Only You Can Make
Before you act, launch the next new product, hold an agency meeting, or conduct a strategy session…
Ask one question: Why should people drink Jack Daniel’s?
The answer has to come from outside with your customers and your potential customers.
Not internally.
If you don’t know the answer, every new product is just another guess, a bet.
To help you think about your business like this:
If you stripped the Jack Daniel’s name off every product, would your product line make sense?
If you answer, no…you don’t have a strategy.
You have a distribution network.
My advice to you: don’t be the next Bud Light. Don’t confuse activity with direction. And don’t try to chase the market with new product lines.
Your first move is a step back.
Diagnose your situation.
A Pre-Game Pep Talk
The market will tell you to move faster. The market will tell you to launch more product lines.
The market will reward activity in the short term.
The data will tell you what’s happened.
The pressure will tell you to show activity in hopes of results and impact.
This is a bet.
Because none of this can tell you what Jack Daniel’s is supposed to be now.
That’s the starting point. That’s where the real work begins.