Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
840-859)
MR ANDY
FENNELL, MR
SIMON DAVIES,
MS DEBORAH
CARTER AND
MR GRAHAM
OAK
9 JULY 2009
Q840 Stephen Hesford: Would you agree
that it is a disgrace?
Mr Fennell: It would be if it
led anywhere. It demonstrates the strength of our code, I am afraid.
That is all I can say about it. Someone wasted some time and we
rejected it at the first pass. I am disappointed that they wasted
their time.
Q841 Stephen Hesford: Can you turn
over to page 15, please?
Mr Fennell: It is another example
of exactly the same thing.
Q842 Stephen Hesford: Smirnoff is
a brand of yours?
Mr Fennell: Yes, it is.
Q843 Stephen Hesford: You would describe
it as a premium brand?
Mr Fennell: Yes, I would.
Q844 Stephen Hesford: I think one
of your advertisers described why they would not do certain things
because they wanted it to be aimed at a certain market with respectability.
Would you agree with that?
Mr Fennell: Yes.
Q845 Stephen Hesford: What is described
as 3.2, which I presume is some kind of presentation, is, "Pub
Man. Gravitates towards his comfort zone from the early part of
the evening." Within that it has a piece called "My
Mates." One of the mates who is allocated a role is called
"Fishcake". Why? Because he drinks like a fish. What
is that driving at if Diageo do not like the idea of drunkenness?
Mr Fennell: We do not. This is
consumer research. It led to no actionable insight and no consumer
activity. I have to say that on the request of the Committee we
sent everything in our files, including most of the stuff at the
beginning of the process. This is unfiltered research. It led
to no actionable insight and no consumer activity. That is what
our process is intended to do. It is not helpful. It does reflect
what some consumer behaviour is like and that is what we need
to change.
Q846 Stephen Hesford: Are you saying
that you became social scientists? You had to research the behaviour
that you did not like in order to then advertise the behaviour
you did like? Is that what you are saying, credibly?
Mr Fennell: The company that did
this research is an independent company. They would have gone
to talk to men about their drinking behaviour and they came back
with, I hope, some insights that were actionable. They also came
back with this one which looks like a waste of money to me, because
I cannot do anything with it. This reflects the fact that we have
a societal issue, a cultural issue, that we need to tackle. No
consumer communication at all could have been, would have been
or was a result of this.
Q847 Stephen Hesford: Can we go to
the slide underneath at 3.8? "What are Pub Man's needs at
this point?" Tell me if I have this wrong: am I accurately
describing what this document looks like? It has an erect ape
man with a pint in his hand. Is that right?
Mr Fennell: Yes.
Q848 Stephen Hesford: It has a slightly
more erect person?
Mr Fennell: Yes.
Q849 Stephen Hesford: And then a
slightly more erect person and then it describes Alpha male who
is flat on his back, which suggests to me drunkenness.
Mr Fennell: It does to me too
and that is why it is useless in the pursuit of marketing alcohol.
Q850 Stephen Hesford: Reading from
left to right from the ape man, the pub man, I am reading from
the slide that we referred to before: "Comfort zone."
That is the guy in his own pub. It refers to the mission. What
possibly was the mission here? The mission is just under where
the guy is slumped out on the floor, drunk. What was the mission?
Mr Fennell: Not surprisingly,
I have never seen this because it did not help us. Nothing actionable
came from it.
Q851 Stephen Hesford: I can accept
it is not helping you.
Mr Fennell: No actionable insights
came from it and there was no consumer communication as a result
of it. It is an independent researcher's observation drawn from
talking to people.
Q852 Stephen Hesford: Why is it branded
with Smirnoff if it was just some person somewhere else?
Mr Fennell: It is an internal
presentation to the people at Smirnoff.
Q853 Stephen Hesford: Who are you?
Mr Fennell: Who are me, yes, absolutely.
This led to no actionable insight. It led to no actionable communication.
Our code is strong.
Q854 Stephen Hesford: Do you accept
that they breach all the codes absolutely?
Mr Fennell: If somebody used this
information to produce consumer communication, it would breach
the code. We did not and we would not.
Q855 Stephen Hesford: All you can
say is that you spent Diageo shareholders' money on this complete
waste of time for no purpose at all?
Mr Fennell: I hope that this research
company came up with something that was a bit more useful, because
otherwise you are right.
Q856 Stephen Hesford: Mr Davies,
Coors is one of—?
Mr Davies: Do you mean Coors like
the brand?
Q857 Stephen Hesford: Yes, and Carling.
Can I take you to page 16? I know you will say it is a work in
progress because it says that there. "Position Statement."
Again, you abide I understand by the advertising code?
Mr Davies: Yes.
Q858 Stephen Hesford: Which does
not permit bravado and all that sort of stuff. "Down to earth
lads who love life in the pack. Carling is the range of lagers
that are almost always the most drinkable so when Carling is with
them their mates have better times because every Carling lager
is brewed to have the most appealing taste, not too fizzy and
not too sweet, no matter what the ABV." ABV is dealing with
strength, is it not? Can you explain what this is driving at?
Mr Davies: It would appear to
be. As you say, this is a work in progress document. It is not
something that would have formed a final point. If I can pick
out some elements within it, when we talk professionally about
groups of our consumers, we talk about cohorts which is jargon.
We try to avoid the use of jargon wherever possible. "Life
in the pack" was a potential expression of an interpretation
of cohort, not one that we use. That is where that would have
come from. In terms of drinkability, that is where we do use quite
a lot within Molson Coors and I would expect to see that on other
documents. What we mean by "drinkability" is relatively
light in taste, relatively refreshing and relatively low in alcohol.
Carling is 4% ABV which is a relatively low alcohol beer. That
is our interpretation of "drinkability" and that is
where we use it across the organisation. Why specifically this
document refers to ABV explicitly I do not know and I cannot comment
on it. It is a piece of work in progress and would not have gone
any further because we do not and cannot market ABV as part of
our communication. Having said that, that has been a matter of
some frustration. We have a Carling brand variant called C2, which
is a 2% beer. I personally believe that is a worthwhile thing
to be doing. I am actually bound by the same regulations that
prevent me from referring to alcoholic strength in the communication
of beer. Those regulations apply in exactly the same way to a
2% beer. I would perhaps ask the Committee to consider whether
or not, for low alcohol products, perhaps some different approach
to regulations might be appropriate.
Q859 Stephen Hesford: You got your
advert in. Can you turn over to page 17, please? Reading from
the top, given that we know what is impermissible, this is clearly
identified as Molson Coors, your company, and it is about Carling.
It is branded as Carling. "Owning sociability." One
of the no noes is selling, advertising, marketing alcohol as a
sociability product, is it not?
Mr Davies: The specific code refers
to social success rather than the representation of alcohol on
its typical consumption occasions, which are group occasions rather
than single occasions. What we must never imply for example is
that an individual if he consumes alcohol will be more popular.
I would contend that responsible alcohol consumption in a group
is one of the more appropriate situations under which alcohol
is consumed. Sociability per se is not specifically an
issue in the code. Implying social success is.
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