MIR: Mrs Underberg-Ruder, let’s start our conversation with the current challenges of branding in a medium-sized, branded company. One principle of successful branding is continuity, but the spirits market is increasingly dominated by fashion drinks causing higher turnover volatility. The Underberg brand seems to be unaffected. How would you explain that?

UNDERBERG-RUDER: Well, I believe, in our industry we face very different customer groups and also a large variety of drinking occasions. That’s one of the peculiarities of the spirits market. First of all, we notice that the drinking occasion is more relevant than the customer type in most cases. Therefore the common segmentation by target groups is less useful, we instead define markets by drinking occasions. For instance: are the spirits consumed with a meal or in a bar? Does it happen in a private or public place? Are they consumed alone, when reading a book for example, or in company, maybe with a group of friends? One and the same person might, for instance, generally choose a fruit distillate like Dettling to enjoy when reading a book, and prefer to drink a beer or a sparkling wine like Schlumberger when going out with friends. Obviously, there are occasions with stable consumption patterns, and there are instances ruled by variety-seeking behavior and experimentation with new drinks.

MIR: I understand: in spirits marketing you have to consider occasions rather than target groups. And what is the second special characteristic of the spirits market?

UNDERBERG-RUDER: The other important distinction is the fact that we face two dramatically different sub-segments with specific customer groups, even if the end user is ultimately the same: marketing a product to grocery retailers or to the Horeca follows completely different principles. For instance, when marketing the Asbach brand (a German specialty) to restaurants and bars, you need to emphasize its “indulgence” character, the high quality or exclusiveness, something the host can use in his communication with guests. So on the one hand you have to help the host to present himself as knowledgeable and on the other you have to serve the customer, who expects a pleasurable experience at the specific location.

MIR: May I broach the aspect of the consumption occasion again? This is a very interesting point. Don’t occasions also change over time? After all, food culture, eating habits or restaurant preferences change constantly. In the course of the recent economic crisis, for instance, people significantly reduced how often they dined out. Did you observe this in your figures? How did you handle it?

UNDERBERG-RUDER: Yes, this trend was very noticeable and we did react marketing wise. We observed that many activities which used to take place in restaurants and bars were replaced by consumption at home. We therefore offered additional products for bar-like consumption experiences via grocery retailers. For instance, for Pitú (an Aguardente de Cana), we offered an entire kit with all the ingredients to make a Pitúrinha at home. That sold very well during the crisis. Offering such “on-trade experiences in off-trade” [on-trade referring to food services such as restaurants and off-trade being grocery retailing in the context of our company], meaning bar-like experiences at home, were a very important tool in the crisis.