Liquid lunch with Glen Brasington

Three pm is not your typical time for a lunch appointment, but then again Glen Brasington is not your typical marketer.

Our lunch today is at a bar, but not just any bar. This one is surprisingly neat, empty and not open to the general public. This is the Ricard bar, a quiet cocktail lounge inside the Pernod Ricard office at Harbour City.

Brasington, who started his career in Sydney as a bartender, is now the vice-president of marketing at Pernod Ricard Asia.

“I first started working behind the bar because it was a fun environment,” he recalls.

He then took a job at Diageo for nine years, the biggest competitor of his current company, serving some prominent brands such as Johnnie Walker and Baileys.

“When I worked in the spirit industry I started to like the products,” he says.

He then shifted to work at PepsiCo as the marketing director for six years before he settled at Pernod Ricard.

Throughout his career journey in Asia he has worked in Bangkok, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia.

With his wife and three children, he moved to Hong Kong two years ago to take on the role as marketing vice-president for Asia.

“The drinking culture is changing fast here,” he says.

“Traditionally, people in Asia used to go to a bar in groups, sitting around tables in private rooms and order bar drinks.

“Now with increasing modern on-trade, a trend of western-style drinking is emerging. Bar goers come in a smaller group, they opt for specific drinks instead of simple mixers at the bar table.

“That’s where the bartenders are much more prominent these days. A lot of international bartenders are coming to Hong Kong as we have more new modern cocktail bars.”

While mixologists and bartenders are the front-line brand ambassadors, he stresses the importance to work closely with bars as well as their staff.

The distiller even lists the top 25 bartenders in Hong Kong in booklets and publications.

With his blending talent, he offers me an Espresso Martini, one of his can’t-fail drinks.

I politely decline because I can’t stand the heavy taste of vodka in every Martini drink.

“You don’t need to finish it, you can just try,” he insists.

Without leaving me a chance to say no, he puts his nose back to the grindstone.

Watching him pouring and blending the many anonymous spirit bottles in earnest, you can tell part of him is still pining for the days as a bartender. Despite the nostalgic appeal, he now has a new mission – to bring Pernod Ricard on a digital overhaul.

It covers three main pillars: e-commerce, big data and branded content.

“Here’s the challenge – digital is nothing by itself. It’s just a means of connecting people as information flows.

“The core of our digital strategy is finding and building a digital community by having relevant messages and talking to them in a two-way conversation.

“So, if we have content that people are interested in, hopefully they’ll come to our digital platforms to enjoy it. This is why we put art in our brand driven by content. And digital is used to connect art and people.”

Last October, Chivas 18 collaborated with local film director Heiward Mak for a social media-led campaign – Dream City – to deepen the brand’s cultural ties through movie content, featuring how local modern gentlemen, the brand’s target segment, pursue their dreams.

To promote its Scotch whisky brand Chivas Regal 25, a dramatic short film Déjà Vu, directed by Wong Kar-wai, premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival to tap the Chinese market.

“China is a Scotch whisky and cognac market. Chinese consumers tend to appreciate the quality of the French product, and the complexity of Scotch whisky,” he says.

He continues enthusiastically: “India is very much a whisky market, but they have their own whisky; Singapore is about champagne and cognac.”

“In Hong Kong, cognac and whisky are both popular – Chivas is most prominent in local bars, whereas cognac and whisky are more at prestige, hotel bars and high-end restaurants.”

Technology is fast growing and consumer behaviour is changing fast and, as it is, there’s little room in Hong Kong’s e-commerce market, especially in the wine and spirit industry.

“At the moment only roughly 1% of our customers make purchases through e-commerce.

“There are hundreds of wine distributors in Hong Kong with its low tax rate. Buying wine and spirit is relatively convenient and easy.

“It’s also because the shops here in Hong Kong trade quite late at night. They have less restriction compared to many other markets in terms of quantity of wine and spirit shops and opening hours.”

Two Espresso Martinis have now been prepared. He professionally dips a straw into one for tasting. “This is how bartenders try their drinks.”

After an initial hesitation, I take a sip, and it’s heavenly.

If drinking is a common leisure in such a busy city as Hong Kong, it’s nonetheless highly social.

It embodies the core attitude of the distiller – conviviality – a motto that is also a gigantic sign embedded on the solid white bar table.

The easiest way to spread this core attitude is through digital.

“People are using digital to interact with the brand these days. They want to have a two-way conversation with brands. The easiest way to do that is through digital.”

A digital initiative – Tribes – has been developed to enhance the connection between art and society. This includes a digital platform for professional architects to communicate, and awards such as the Chivas 18 Architecture and Design Awards to recognise the efforts of some of the outstanding architects in town.

“Architects are a very social profession, highly influential. Their design and engineering background have granted them knowledge to appreciate the complexity involved in whisky production, and the complexity in our production information.”

It also effectively reaches out to Chivas’ main proposition – gentlemen, he adds.

Perhaps there’s an explanation for his rather indifferent attitude, considering he has just come back from a week-long business trip at Google’s headquarters at Silicon Valley with several digital experts, where he learnt more about how to make Pernod Ricard more of a digital company

Nonetheless, his blending talent remains a great memory. After drinking two of his Espresso Martinis, I leave much happier then when I first walked in.