1. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 • $6.95
TASTINGTASTING PANELPANEL
THE
MEET THE MARKETING MASTERS: Chris Patino, Director of
Brand Education; Mitch Cristol, Director of Trade Marketing;
Marime Riancho, Director Multicultural Marketing; Steve
Chasen, Director of Trade Marketing; Ed DeLoreto, Director
On-Premise and Consumer Engagement; Carol Giaconelli,
Director of Marketing Operations; Frank Polley, Vice President
Spirits Trade Marketing.
MeettheInfluencers
BehindPernodRicard’s
TradeMarketing
PioneeringChannels
oftheFuture

2. 68 / the tasting panel / january/february 2015
COVER STORY
If you crave a different kind of buzz, chances are Pernod-
Ricard USA (PRUSA) is satisfying your thirst. The digital social revolution of the
last decade has markedly changed the face of sales and brand marketing, and the
proverbial heads of state at PRUSA sought out a team of visionaries back in 2011 to
help re-tool their approach to on- and off-premise marketing.
In November of 2013, Frank Polley, a seasoned marketer who hails from Diageo,
InBev and then Heineken, was brought on board to focus PRUSA’s visions for Trade
Marketing with a goal of “Building the leading Center of Excellence within Pernod-
Ricard Globally” and one that had a “strong future built on solid foundations,”
At Pernod Ricard’s HQ in New
York City, its founding father’s
mission lives on.
Meet the market-
ing masters: Chris Patino,
Director of Brand Education;
Mitch Cristol, Director of Trade
Marketing; Marime Riancho, Director
Multicultural Marketing; Steve Chasen,
Director of Trade Marketing; Ed DeLoreto,
Director On-Premise and Consumer
Engagement; Carol Giaconelli,
Director of Marketing Operations;
Frank Polley, Vice President
Spirits Trade Marketing.
MEET THE INFLUENCERS BEHIND PERNOD-RICARD’S
NEW WAVE OF TRADE MARKETING
by Jonathan Cristaldi / photos by Tim Murray
Pioneering Channels of the
Future

3. january/february 2015 / the tasting panel / 69
according to Polley. “We have formed a passionate team that strives to
over-deliver on expectations each and every day,” he says. And that pas-
sion extends to both on- and off-premise accounts. “Given the super-pre-
mium nature of our portfolio and the importance of building these brands
in the on-premise, we have to be strong at marketing in the on-trade. At
the same time, the off-premise is a significant portion of consumption and
is equally important to the long-term growth of our brands,” says Polley.
The challenge, Polley explains, is for his team in concert with other key
functions across the company to “change the game across all channels in
which we play”: on-premise, off-premise and the ever-growing digital,
social and mobile channel. In essence, he envisions a kind of proprietary
network of programs and tools across our brands that are easy to activate
for the trade and easy for consumers to engage, in part because they’re
both compelling and relevant to why consumers are shopping or drinking.
A Global Visionary
For Pernod-Ricard, a successful year is simple. “Certainly profits are
important, and volume growth is critical as well, but value-share growth is
by far the strongest measure of our success,” says Polley. “It’s really about
understanding and leveraging the key drivers for each of our brands as
well as unlocking the power of the broader portfolio. Our Irish portfolio is
a good example of this, with Jameson Irish Whiskey holding a 77 percent
category share. Our stable of smaller Irish brands—Redbreast, Midleton,
Powers, Paddy’s, Green Spot and Yellow Spot—can all benefit from
Jameson’s position to help expand their points of distribution and reach
within the market,” he says. “It’s simply delivering the right tools to our
sales and distributor teams to drive this and executing consistently.”
As the company looks forward to 2015, the true test of Polley and his
team’s efforts to “drive more collaboration and deliver more effective
thinking” will be to prove the impact their plans have in the marketplace.
The question, says Polley, is: “Are we able to garner more traction with
our plans, more distribution, display or menu commitments, key visibility
placements, stronger brand affinity and support with the trade and are
they effective at driving consumer engagement?”
The Evolution of the Brand
Ambassador
PRUSA’s brand ambassador program is a prime example of Polley’s “game-
changing” team-focused efforts, aimed at building a “best of” in the industry.
With 55 brand ambassadors spread across 14 brands, around the
country, “high engagement and high touch” is the name of the game,
according to Steve Chasen, PRUSA Director of Trade Marketing. Chasen
and his team are out five or six nights a week, working with people who
are “the physical embodiment of the brand,” says Chasen. “Our ambas-
sadors need to be as informed as, or more informed than the trade, which
is a very hard thing to contend with today. As bartending has become a
career option for a lot of people, many are investing in education, travel
and networking,” he says.
Whereas once, an ambassador role might have been a job for the party
guy with the corporate card who knew about his brand but wasn’t really
a category expert, ambassadors today operate in a smaller universe—
focused on 50 to 60 key accounts, working on “influencing the influenc-
ers,” says Chasen.
Mastering social media has become a critical element. “We give strong
guidelines,” explains Chasen, because any social advocacy from their
employees is viewed as an advertisement, which trickles down to consum-
ers, “so the rules of advertising apply. I think we’re taking a lead in terms
of responsible communication in social, and we hope that our friends in
the industry will be equally responsible.”
Over the last two years, there has also been a shift in how a brand
ambassador’s success is measured. “We’ve moved away from a ‘hand
the keys’ approach,” says Chasen. “We’ve implemented a digital report-
ing system that looks at daily, weekly and monthly goals, where key
Frank Polley, Vice President
Spirits Trade Marketing.
Steve Chasen, Director of
Trade Marketing.
Chris Patino, Director of
Brand Education.

4. 70 / the tasting panel / january/february 2015
stakeholders can look at progress and
measure it against brand performance
and the ambassador, to see which
education programs are working best.
It’s been very successful, made every-
one’s lives easier, and we can account
for nearly every dollar spent and how
it’s having an impact.”
From BarSmarts
to Tales
Chris Patino, PRUSA’s Director of
Brand Education, started his career in
the beverage industry as a bartender.
He explains his start: “I was living in
New Orleans and fell in love with the
spirits side of the biz—it was all passion
at first, then I got into the science side
and the organoleptic aspects of what’s
in the glass and from there the building
blocks of beverages.”
Patino oversees cocktail develop-
ment and drink strategy, and he’s
served at the James Beard Awards as
well as other major events, including
Tales of the Cocktail, Portland Cocktail
Week and California’s Golden State of
Cocktails, in addition to myriad of other
smaller events.
“We don’t feel there is a one-size
model that fits every opportunity,” says
Patino, “and with the 500,000+ bartend-
ers working in the U.S.—that’s a lot
of people making a career of it, while
some are paying their way through
school and others are moonlighting as
a second job. With so many different
skill-sets and goals, I have to ask: What
are they looking for?”
Pernod’s BarSmarts program is
the answer to Patino’s question. An
exclusive collaboration between the
Beverage Alcohol Resource (BAR), LLC
(the partners are Dale DeGroff, Doug
Frost, Steve Olson, F. Paul Pacult, Andy
Seymour and David Wondrich), the
program is geared toward bartenders,
but servers, busboys even general man-
agers have taken it as well. “We pick
a city,” explains Patino; “we just did
Vegas and Seattle is next. Participants
watch pre-course material online, then
have a live session with a BAR partner
who will judge their drink-making,
then there’s a written test. Anyone
scoring 85 percent or above is awarded
an Advanced Certificate. It’s tough,
engaging and people really feel like
they’ve accomplished something,” he
says. (BarSmarts has become the pre-
requisite course for BAR’s “Bar Five
Day” advanced intensive, which takes
place in NYC every year for a select
group of bartenders).
The Last 3 Feet
You’ve probably heard of and even
used the expression “Moment of Truth”
and in PRUSA’s world, that “final deci-
sion or moment” comes in at the “Last
3 Feet.” Imagine the physical space
between the consumer and a bottle of
say, Jameson Irish Whiskey, on a store
shelf at an off-premise location—that’s
always been perceived as the Last 3
Feet. But according to Mitch Cristol,
Director of Trade Marketing, “Really,
it’s more a state of mind than the
physical space, because 60 percent of
purchasing decisions are made before
shoppers even get to the store.” Mitch
adds, “Don’t get me wrong, we need to
win in-store, but we also need to win
before they get to the store!”
“We spend time doing brand educa-
tion in the off-premise and work with
our retail partners to develop category-
selling stories, not just about our
brands, but for the entire category—
because a rising tide raises all boats,”
he says.
Still, the Last 3 Feet can be critical
in a game-changing eleventh hour
decision. According to a 2013 Miller
Zell Display Study, 70 percent of
surveyed shoppers said they noticed
or engaged with end-aisle displays.
That same survey found that category-
specific displays are the sweet spot,
noticed by 21 percent of shoppers with
COVER STORY
Mitch Cristol, Director of Trade
Marketing.
Ed DeLoreto, Director On-Premise
and Consumer Engagement.
Carol Giaconelli, Director of
Marketing Operations.
Marime Riancho, Director
Multicultural Marketing.

5. january/february 2015 / the tasting panel / 71
a conversion rate of roughly half—11
percent. “The key is to get placements
on the floor at a critical time,” explains
Carol Giaconelli, Director of Marketing
Operations, “ideally driving an engag-
ing message. If it attracts shoppers
to stop and shop, then we’ve hit the
mark. We’re going deeper with digital
opportunities as well—shelf displays
and video touch screens that interact
with our shoppers on their terms.”
When it comes to the Last 3 Feet for
on-premise accounts, Ed DeLoreto,
Director of On-Premise and Consumer
Engagement, says the focus is on those
36 inches “in front of the bar where it’s
possible to touch upon all the senses—
through sampling or an education
event, or a new fact about your favorite
spirit that you weren’t aware of. It’s an
opportunity to find what levers need to
be pulled, and the bartender has criti-
cal tools to help, like menus, a special
or feature and samples. Take Jameson,
for example: Maybe the consumer
didn’t know that Jameson has a new
expression, Black Barrel—there’s an
opportunity to pull the ‘upgrade’ lever,
so fundamentally in this case, it’s
absolutely about educating the
bartender,” says DeLoreto.
Beyond the bartender,
because the digital age is
very much a “you find us,
we find you,” anything
goes space, apps and
social sites are the new
frontier—intentional or
accidental—of discov-
ery. Hence, PRUSA has
spent the last 12 to 18
months moving away
from just thematic-based
points of sale (like a summer
picture with a summer mes-
sage on it) to more fully integrated
programs all in an effort to drive more
engagement and ultimately, more value
for consumers and our retail partners.
Since PRUSA can’t sell direct-to-con-
sumer, the company is exploring ways
to get in on what Mitch Cristol refers
to as a new “fourth-tier, an extension
of the three-tier system,” where apps
like shopkick, Ibota and Drizly provide
critical marketing opportunities to
hone in on things like shopper loyalty
programs and e-commerce—eventu-
ally driving consumers to PRUSA
brands. “People are experiencing craft
cocktails all over and they want to
replicate that on-premise experience at
home. So, they’re spending more time
in the digital space looking for recipes,
which provides an ideal opportunity
to discover one of our brands in that
fourth-tier environment.”
One area of Marketing at PRUSA
you might not expect to find in Trade
Marketing is Multicultural Marketing,
perhaps the greatest growth potential
for Pernod-Ricard in the foresee-
able future. Across PRUSA’s entire
portfolio, Marime Riancho, Director
of Multicultural Marketing, says that
her team is focused on every single
brand and the nuances that appeal to
Hispanic, African-American and Asian
consumers.
“It’s all about relationships, period,”
says Riancho. “I do a ton of market
visits with local market managers, and
because most are small, independent,
family-run accounts, you need to estab-
lish a strong relationship with them.
What we’ve identified is that ensuring
from a point of sale (POS) standpoint,
we have the right format so that in those
last three feet, our people in the field
can perform well and we are delivering
the right message to the right shopper
at the right time,” she says.
“For example, we have a partnership
with Chivas and a Latin rock band
called Maná, which appeals to all
Hispanics, Mexican and Caribbean plus
Central and South American. Maná
launches a new album in 2015 and has
a concert tour, so our Retail Program
and POS is all about localizing the
message of winning tickets across each
concert. These local sweepstakes speak
to our retailers too as they feel we are
speaking to their shoppers which helps
get them on board—everyone wins,”
says Riancho.
For on-premise, Riancho’s team
works closely with the Steve Chasen’s
on-premise team to ensure that the
drinks strategy is “relevant” to the cat-
egories we play in and our Multicultural
consumer flavor preferences—like
the right cocktail and shot in markets
where bars see predominately Hispanic
consumers come through their doors
looking for Chivas, Absolut or Jameson,
or in African-American–dominant
communities where Avión continues to
grow or where ABSOLUT Apeach is a
flavor of choice.
“One of our more significant Last
3 Feet efforts focused on VAPs,” says
Riancho. “We ran numbers between
2012 (when the first Hispanic Chivas
VAP was offered) to 2014 (when we
introduced the Maná Chivas VAP) and
found that field orders grew by 132
percent. The impact of integrating a
partnership such as Maná into this
offering has made a big difference—it’s
a huge growth opportunity, and one
we’ve been able to capitalize on because
we have our finger on the pulse.”
With so many consumer-engage-
ment incentives, educational programs
and category-promotion strategies in
play, Pernod Ricard USA continues
to spearhead the future of wine and
spirits marketing for a rapidly chang-
ing world.
PHOTO:COURTESYOFPERNODRICARD
As part of its
multicultural
marketing, Chivas
has partnered with
Latin rock band
Maná, extending the
brand’s reach even
further amongst
Mexican and South
American Hispanic
communities.