Building Community in Data Driven Marketing - with Pernod Ricard's Julie Pender

Julie Pender, currently the UK Creative Content Manager for Havana Club at Pernod Ricard, values community building as a way to create genuine connections with her brand's audience. In a world that focuses on reach and digital, those human relationships hold more power than ever.

Julie thinks that leveraging relationships with smaller boutiques and service providers is not only true to her brand ethos, it's also smart marketing. Yes, brands can have incredible reach through social media, influencers, and digital marketing. But that reach doesn't necessarily translate to sales. And, in her own words, "we sometimes forget what we're ultimately here to do. And it's, in my case, it's to sell rum, right? If I do some amazing things that show phenomenal growth, and I've delivered billions of impressions, but I did not sell one bottle of Havana Club, I didn't do my job."

On the podcast, we also talk about how insights from Automated Creative have helped Julie deliver messaging that resonates with her audience. Her key focus is how to leverage the wealth of data marketers have access to, into "something that your brand can use for profitable growth."
As she puts it:
"When I need insights that go beyond that kind of level of observation, it is your team [at Automated Creative] that I call and it's that level of insight that gives me the power to talk about messaging back into the community, because I'm looking for things I know have already resonated."

For Havana Club, sometimes that's a niche event with hip hop artists and a Canadian jeweller. Tune in to the podcast to find out more and listen to Julie give her best data driven marketing tips.

The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.

Julie Pender 0:00
It takes people to build a community. It's not AI that's going to build it for us. It needs interaction and it needs to be maintained. You know, people need to be contacted in a very authentic and genuine way, not just a hey, we're having an event.

Speaker 0:17
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Tom Ollerton 0:50
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of the creative effectiveness platform, Automated Creative and this is a podcast about the future of data driven marketing. We've done over 300 episodes of this thing for years and years and years, and it's my absolute pleasure and privilege to interview our industry's leaders about their vision for the future of data driven marketing. And this week's no different. I am on a call with I'm happy to say my friend as well as my client and networking lunch buddy, Julie Pender, so I've known Julie for a while now, and it's an absolute treat to have her on the show, but currently she is at Pernod Ricard as Havana Club UK creative and content manager. So Julie, for anyone who doesn't have the pleasure of knowing you, can you give the audience a bit of background about who you are and what you do?

Julie Pender 1:38
Yeah, absolutely. Tom so I'm Canadian. You might tell that by my accent, I've lived in the UK for about, I gotta say, 17 years now. I came for one year to have a bit of fun because I was working for William Grant and sons in the spirits industry, and they had a chance to move me here. And I've never looked back. And I've been working in beverage alcohol marketing and global and local roles here in the UK the entire time I've been here. Before that the one interesting fat Tom that you maybe don't know is I actually worked for a Canadian winery. So my first job in the industry was actually at a winery, and I love right now that everyone's saying Gen Z is not drinking wine, because I was like, something like 25 years old, came out of university and was absolutely enthralled with wines and wineries, and that got me into the industry. And here I've remained my entire career. I don't even want to count the years, because it's over 25 years now. I've been doing basically beer, spirits and wine marketing.

Tom Ollerton 2:28
So my theory about alcohol marketing, of which Automated Creative have done a lot with you and others, is that it's all about pleasure. There's not many marketing categories that are all about delivering happiness and pleasure, albeit for the moment, yes there are others, but quite a lot of the times, like solving a problem, or, yeah, helping you get from A to B, or whatever it is. But alcohol, it's all about, like, giving someone that moment of joy, which I think makes it really lovely category to work.

Julie Pender 2:56
Yeah, I think it's, I've always thought, a bit more entertainment. I don't know. You know, for me, it's, it's, it's about, you know, you're doing it while you're, you know, in the ideal circumstances, because I'm not going to be naive, but when I think about alcohol, it's not meant to be the focus of your evening out. It's meant to be when you're, you know, out with your friends, and you're in a great restaurant, and you're having a fabulous supper, and you had some lovely wines to go with it, and it might be part of the conversation, and it's always, for me, it was always part of that kind of entertaining aspect of of being with your friends and enjoying things together. But you're right, actually, it could be joy pleasure, although my mind goes into another category. So thank you for that inspiration, because maybe I can do like a parallel CV into what else my my my skill set can have a transferability into.

Tom Ollerton 3:43
So are you a marketing book person? Do you sort of squirrel away and can get through different marketing books, or do you sort of learn on the job? Or what's your angle?

Julie Pender 3:53
So I am more of a kind of podcast or condensed version book kind of person. I don't tend to read a lot of books, and it's mostly because my book reading years with children kind of became a little bit harder to find the time to do it. So I look for efficiencies. So I love, I love kind of YouTube short content more likely than books. But I do have, you know, every so often, some book will rise above and I just got this new one recommended to me by this guy by the name of Tom Ollerton. He's just did some kind of data driven one. So that's next on my reading list.

Tom Ollerton 4:36
Have you bought it yet, have you got it? Oh, come on.

Julie Pender 4:38
No, not yet, not yet. I've got it bookmarked, though. Don't worry, it's coming. It's coming.

Tom Ollerton 4:38
So it's interesting that you haven't bought my book yet, but that's fine. I'll forgive you, and you go to podcasts and YouTube and so on, and I'd like to know more, but later, about the short form version of the books and stuff. I've tried that, and not for a long time, but, but is there one particular book that you find yourself relying on?

Julie Pender 4:50
Okay, so there's one particular book that I love, and I go back and watch the short form content on and I actually watched the TED talk and then went back and bought the book because I absolutely loved it. And it's actually the 15th year anniversary of the Simon Sinek "Start with Why." I absolutely love that question. I think seeking out to understand things is absolutely critical in every situation, and in my mind, it's become so much more relevant the more self aware I've become, and the more aware I've become around the world, as I kind of opened up my my worldview, having left a, you know, Canada in a small town and then came and lived in a very different global market, I think starting with why is always a great place. And I just find Simon Sinek really inspirational. And then, yeah, this one of my favourite books, and I recommend it. So book I recommend most to people when they say, you know, what book should I read?

Tom Ollerton 5:39
So I think, isn't it like the most viewed TED talk ever, or something along those lines, assuming someone who's watching this, listening to this, hasn't heard it, what... how could you relay what the book or the TED talk was saying?

Julie Pender 5:54
So the the key part for me that resonates with me is that when I read that book, I was working at William Grant and sons, I had moved from Glenfiddich local market, and I'd come into a global marketing role, and I still had this mentality, perhaps that comes from this institutional approach to your education, that people were leading me, that I was the recipient of the leadership happening around me. And maybe it's because of, you know, that relationship of control when you're in the classroom. But what really Simon Sinek's book for me, is reframed the fact that I was the leader. Even though I wasn't in a paid position of authority, I was still a leader. I could be a leader in culture, in terms of what I brought into the business. I could actually directly lead on the projects that I was, you know, responsible for, and I was working with people. And I could be a leader in the in the in the room, in terms of who people what we were trying to deliver. And that, for me, was a real, transformational reframing. Because up until then, I would, I would sit sometimes at a table and have a point of view and not and not share it. I you know, maybe it was, now everybody calls it imposter syndrome, but I would, I would pause. I'd be like, Oh, maybe somebody else can say that because they're the leader in the room, you know, they're paid more than I am, they're more senior than I am. And so the real big thing for me was the reframing of who and what a leader is.

Tom Ollerton 7:10
And what was your why in that scenario? Because that's what he talks about. I'm the centre about that. Didn't know why you are doing something. And everything scales from that.

Julie Pender 7:17
Yeah. And I think that, for me is also around a lot of debate right now is happening around purpose driven and understanding why you're doing something. So for me, I actually start to understand my why and what I like as I really like people. A lot of what I do and what the motivation I get, the energy I get, what really comes to when I need you know when I get engaged in projects and get engaged in things. For me, the why is around the people, it's around the humans and and finding that kind of purpose in terms of why I'm there.

Tom Ollerton 7:53
So one of the criticisms of Sinek's why approach is that it clearly it's relevant for you personally, in a in a, let's say we're talking about a professional environment here, and that was instantly applicable. But then if you try and put a why for a brand, you can say, Oh, we exist because this is our purpose, or our mission, or whatever. When, in reality, consumers are often just buying because it's cheap or the other thing isn't available. So how do you...

Julie Pender 8:24
I know, but isn't that the why? Isn't that the why they're buying it? Because, you know, in alcohol industry, we get caught up in, I think, trying to say, oh, you know, there's lots of reasons why people I want to feel special when I drink this single malt or, you know, this gin is going to be the highest quality gins. It's going to impress my friends when I drink it. But I don't really, I don't really think people think that way. I think you're right. The why is often quite can be quite fundamental. It's like I remembered what it was when it was on shelf and it was the price point. And so that's why our very first conversation today was about, I always thought we were part of like, more about entertainment, because the why people were drinking. And again, this is not every occasion, but the why was to be, you know, part of a pleasant moment and entertained, and to be with your friends and socialising, it's not or to be tend to enjoy the pleasure of it, but it was never, you know, they don't expect their alcohol to be fixing the world. You know, I'm not drinking that gin, because this gin is going to be what fixes global warming. I still think there's a table stake that you have to be not killing the planet when you go to build what you're building. But I think the purposes became so lofty, it's like everything became very, you know, too ambitious for what, what the category was. So I think the why can be a simple why.

Tom Ollerton 9:41
so moving from purpose and lofty claims and gins that solve the climate crisis and so on. What advice do you have for data driven marketers to become better? What is that kind of one bit of advice that you find yourself sharing with your team? On how to improve their performances, data driven folk?

Julie Pender 10:03
So we get a lot of data. So at Pernod Ricard, we have a huge amount of insights. We have insights teams. We have a data insight warehouse, so you can get a lot of information, and for me, it's finding the key bits of insight that you can from a load of observations that are getting thrown at you. And I think that that's the key thing, that actually a lot of people, especially when newer people, come into the category, they get quite excited about the observations they're making a as a new person into the category and around alcohol and around kind of the consumer usage and occasion motivation and the brand stories and the authenticity and all of these wonderful things that attracted me into the industry. But again, there are lots of observations, and I think it's about understanding the difference between observation insight and then an insight that your business can actually, or your brand can actually jump onto and use to drive profitable growth. Because I think the other thing that happens is a lot of observations from data get used to drive wrong behaviours, and we sometimes forget what we're ultimately here to do. And it's, in my case, it's to sell rum, right? If I do some amazing things that show phenomenal growth, and I've delivered billions of impressions, but I did not sell one bottle of Havana Club, I didn't do my job.

Tom Ollerton 11:23
So that is one of the key themes that comes from the book. And one particular interview I had with Perla Bloom, I think she said she was EA when I interviewed her, that's most important thing. Yeah, thank you. There we go. And she was talking about acting as a strategist within the business, and she was saying that if you have a data point that's interesting, it's stopping you doing your job. And insight is something that inspires a creative idea, and we've very much taken on that thought at Automated Creative actually. So when we're reporting back to our clients, it's like having something where you'll scratch your chins and go, Yeah, that's interesting, but that's just, that's just wasting everyone's time. Whereas it's like, here's this insight, right? Okay, we should now go and do that. It's obvious. We should go and do this next thing because it inspired a creative action. Whereas if it's just like, Hmm, that is interesting, that's wasting everyone's time.

Julie Pender 12:13
Yeah, but you're right, there's and there's so much data that is interesting, and especially as an individual, when you first come into a category or a brand or into a market. Because when we're working globally, I might go into new marketplace, go, oh, like, that's really interesting that basically, you know, Spanish consumers love sweeter style rums, but hate being called spiced rums because they think it's too sweet, but actually what they're drinking is sweeter style rums. But I'm like, how does that help me? What am I going to do with that information. Like, you know, what do I throw out every recipe we've made? You know? How do I turn that into something like, what does it turn into an innovation story? Which? You know? How do you leverage that into something that your brand can use for profitable growth?

Tom Ollerton 12:52
It's like that. I think a really good example of, quite often just interesting information, is like, Fitbits and fitness trackers. You know, you know, you get it, and you're like, look at that. Look at that. I did more steps on Wednesday, more what steps on Wednesday, then on Thursday. My heart went up. Like people, what are you going to do differently? Are you exercising more you get like so yes, I totally agree with that point. So we're going to now talk about your shiny new object, which is the power of community. So I'm not convinced this is a shiny new object, but I'm, I'm sure that you will convince me that it can be.

Julie Pender 13:26
Ok. So one of the interesting data points that I've seen in some of our brand health trackers is this, this human connection is missing. We're getting a lot of people addicted to devices. There's a lot of inspirational ideas put, put your phone and lock it up, and you go into a bar so your friends talk to each other, and you stay in the moment. And at Havana Club, we've actually built a really large community around the brand, and we've been doing lots of things individually with people, but actually the power of the shiny new thing about community is about how do you unlock the collective energy of your community, and how do you do that in a way now that brings back people, back into physical spaces and back together, because and at fairly good scale. Because I think what everyone loved about digital is that I could reach millions of people with such small budgets, and then now we're like, actually, it's not quite true. You're going to have really great content online. It costs quite a bit of money, and the more interesting it is, the smaller the audience gets. Because it's more niche, it's more interesting so, but the community, the shiny new thing for me about the community is when I see what we're looking at in terms of post covid world, where, you know, there's a generation that didn't experience going out and, for example, going to nightclubs and seeing, you know, how their university experience was all online on a computer, they didn't have those moments of coming back together again. We're seeing, you know, different things happen with religion and churches, and churches were traditionally a high touch community part. And for me, when I look at the shiny new thing, what I see and what we've really been able to build on Havana Club is we've curated a community of people who have the same ethos that we do. Yeah. And that we're working together to help each other and using the community to collectively use our energy to do something together. And that, for me, is about community.

Tom Ollerton 15:15
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Tom Ollerton 15:52
I really like that point around. Yeah, digital, we can hit everyone everywhere, but it's expensive, and if anyone's going to find it relevant, you need to niche down, then that reduces the reach, which is such a good point. But just can you give me some specifics on how you've actually done that, how you found this community of people have the same beliefs as you do, like, how's that evidence itself? And how does that work?

Julie Pender 16:12
So it's partners, it's partners. It's how we pick partners to work with, and how you pick partners to have long term relationships. So a lot of the time, from a brand marketing point of view, there's a lot of global talent that gets out there, and a lot of celebrity. And actually one of our strongest, biggest impacts for Havana Club came in in the last kind of 12 months, has been from what we call our grassroots community. So we basically build relationships with people. We build relationships with, you know, smaller, kind of boutique, kind of service providers for people that we might want to do events with, or that we might want to do kind of influencer outreach with, and we start to try and build a relationship. And even on that influencer part, I hate that word now, because I think it's like, it's so broad, you know, anybody who's influencing someone, but it's like, how do we actually find partners and collaborate with them, and then pull them into our community, and then they know. So, you know, a couple of people know, or I think I'm on the regular speed dial Julie. I need some rum for my event. And it's not like, oh, send me your pitch deck. How much you know? I don't go through this whole massive analysis. I'm like, actually, you're part of my community. Of course, I'm going to, you know, be there for you when you're going to go launch something at your side. Tom, when you have your book launch party. I want to be the rum that's available in a fantastic rum teeny or maybe an El presidente. I feel like you might be that kind of guy, but that's you know that for me is about building that community, and it's done through personal interaction and successfully building things together.

Tom Ollerton 17:36
Julie, I think the best cocktail recipe you gave me was this rum and coke, but with sea salt in it, Jumbo, brilliant.

Julie Pender 17:45
Spiced rum. Yeah, let me do it. It's because it really works with Havana Club spiced rum. Havana Club spiced rum with your cola of choice, and then Maldon flight salt, and all of your friends are gonna look at you and think you're crazy. You're gonna say, taste the difference now, and all of them, the spices come out, and it's so easy.

Tom Ollerton 18:08
Yeah, yeah. And it feels quite normal, it feels quite naughty, doesn't it? Having a bit of salt in there feels like sort of a bit extra, but in a good way. Okay, so, so you've built this community that's beneficial in two directions. You help them. They help you. You share those you share those insights backgrounds. I would like to, I would like to hear you talk about the automated creative part of that. But we can all edit out if you don't feel that's relevant for them.

Julie Pender 18:38
No, but it is relevant for that actually, because when I go and I look at a project now, it's how I approach what I'm going to do, and I think I'm going to try and find a way to articulate it, because Tom No, I've never articulated this. This is just kind of what's happened when I first came into the brand. When I first came into the brand a year ago, there was lots of little things happening on the brand with lots of different people. And there were people who were big fans of the brand, who wanted to do, wanted to work with us. We were working with big talent, little talent, medium sized talent, and there was lots of people doing lots of little things. And what happened is I pulled it together into a community, and I started to pick a couple of key points where we could all work together and figure out a What are you trying to do? What are your What are your objectives? And in terms of automated creative you guys came very early in on that journey, because I did do Cuban mode launch campaign where I needed to get insights in terms of what messaging was resonating into our community, into the people who were actively engaging with us in social media on our own pages, but as well as what was working when we were trying to unlock new audiences in the new you know, bring people back into the brand and and for me, you know that you are part of my community. When I need insights that goes beyond that kind of level of observation, it is your team that I call and it's that level of insight that gives me the power to talk about. Messaging back into the community, because I'm looking for things I know have already resonated. So I do see the data points that can show that people are engaging in the conversations. And so I know this is super when I think about a very specific example. We had a gold Limited Edition bottle that we were launching last year, and we had a launch party. And what I could have done is I just could have farmed it all out to pay a tonne of money. You throw it at an event agency and you say, go ahead and go and do your thing. But that's not actually. I did it again. We did big lime energy. I had your team. I invited them up for drinks there twice in the last two events, the most successful parts of our at our actual events, in terms of reaching highly engaged people and leading to kind of desired behaviour change has been through. I've picked the DJs who are DJs now we've worked with consistently, who work and CO promote events with us, because they don't just, they're not hired in by an events company for the day before. You know, we work with some media partners that we might be asking for that would be traditionally called influencers or content creators that we've worked with in the past, so we're trying to work with them again to say, actually, we need, we got another event. Can you come back? And it's about building those long term relationships so that they kind of did a community. And, like I said, I have a an actually owe somebody a text message right now over the weekend that said, Can I have some rum this week? Because I need some rum for my event. And I'm like, Absolutely, I'm gonna go, go. You know, you're part of my community. I'm gonna give some back.

Tom Ollerton 21:23
Julie, no one's ever come on this podcast before and talked so passionately and openly about giving away free booze for events. I think you can your community.

Julie Pender 21:32
No, it's not, drink responsibly.

Tom Ollerton 21:36
Of course, drink responsibly. But yeah, I think people are going to reach out. And so I want to be part of this, part of this, this wonderful community that you've built so, so what are the what are the pushbacks that you've had internally when you've put forward this strategy of Building a community because, to your point, an event can feel quite small, and I would have thought a CMO might be well now really reach, reach, reach, awareness, saliency, top of mindness at the point of sale. What arguments do you find yourself winning with when it comes to getting people on board with investing in communities in a world where it's all about reach?

Julie Pender 22:25
We have a great case study. So I would say it was the we did a partnership last year with a Canadian jeweller. There's a real Canadian theme around what happens with Havana Club and my Simon Sinek's Canadian as well. But we had a Canadian jeweller, a guy by the name of Jonathan Rackshaw. He's a goldsmith, and so we had him design our label. We had him come to London for an event. I mean, he was in himself, I don't know, had like, 10, 15,000 followers, not a celebrity. He's he does grills for a lot of the hip hop club, and he did an absolutely stunning model, and he came over and gave us his time to be at a launch event. And we got our community out to attend it. We got our DJs, that we pulled on, that we worked with in the past. You know, we tried to build, start with our invite list where people who were regular supporters of the brand, and we had about 120 people at the event, but it was the biggest share of conversation and the biggest kind of brand health tracker move we saw with the, you know, with a, I would say, a fairly minimal investment compared to how many we'd done the past. So you take that case study to stakeholders and say, here's what we can do, because it takes people to build a community. It's not AI that's going to build it for us. It needs interaction, and it needs to be maintained, and it needs, you know, people need to be contacted in a very authentic and genuine way, not just, Hey, we're having an event. You know, it's, that's why the community is actually a really community. It's not just, you know, my, my rolodex of, of who I can call?

Tom Ollerton 23:48
Yeah, we were chatting to Alex Hobhouse, my business partner, and he's saying that there's all too many conversations where people go, Oh, you can just use this AI now to, like, throw up, like, a website for a run brand, and you can do all vibe coding and all the rest of it and, but everyone's talking about these things as if it's only them that can do it. You know, it's like, it's like, I don't know the the year. It's like, someone getting off the Eurostar look, I got, I got from London to Paris in, you know, hour and a half, or whatever it was, but, yeah, yeah, but so did like 400 other people. It's not, it's not a it's not a business, it's not a competitive advantage, it's just a disadvantage not to do it. And I think what's really going to matter in the next few years, and obviously this part of about automated creative is like, we need to do what everyone else isn't prepared to do and that's the thing that will make you cut through and stand out. And I think what you're talking about here, Julie, if I understand it correctly, is is going to that extra length and getting this weird designer guy over from Canada to do an event. But then that's the thing that works. That's the thing that builds the brand. That's rare, right? I've never heard of that.

Julie Pender 25:00
So no, and Tom, I think you do that actually quite naturally, and maybe I'm not articulating it well, but you've created this amazing Whatsapp group from people who have participated in your AWA. And you know when I see the power of the crowd and how genuinely helpful people are that are sometimes answering questions and queries and responses and giving support to other people where they don't have to, right? But they've got, you've got their experience through automated creative in common, and then they genuinely are interested in the topic. And I think, like when I look at this, I'll be quite curious about what's happening in the world, so I get a little bit of knowledge out of it, but genuinely, you know, opening doors for each other and supporting each other because they're supporting people. You know, if you put an AI robot into that group to automate the answers, you know, take away the magic.

Tom Ollerton 25:46
My favourite thing about that group last week was it the week before that, I was it Dario, he said, I've written this post. Yes, I've written this post, but I didn't use any AI in it. AI like the absence of AI as being a is a proof of like quality or integrity or value, yes, which is, that's different, isn't it? That's that's a real change for me. I thought it was...

Julie Pender 26:11
You put in spelling errors so it looks like you actually did it, and don't put an em dash. Everybody hates the em dash looks like aI wrote it. Yeah?

Tom Ollerton 26:19
No. So unfortunately, we have to call it a day. The hell I'd love to carry on chatting. So if someone's get in touch with you, where is the best place to do that and what makes a message that you'll actually reply to?

Julie Pender 26:32
So the best place to get in touch with me is actually LinkedIn, and sending a message makes me reply. When people just send me blank notes on LinkedIn, I tend to kind of like I get too many of them. Don't you just get requests? Oh, just any. Add a note. Add a note. There's a little button on the side that says, add a note and say, here's how I'm relevant, here's what's interesting, here's where I saw you. And I'm not just like a cold lead, because I do think I get a lot of people asking just, you know, open the door. I need and want access to your your your your company, your corporate, but I am looking for partners and communities. So that's also a great note to put in there to say, you know, we think we can, like you said, spark something together. And it's the idea of, you know, when people come together, you create better things. So I'm always looking to make my community bigger.

Tom Ollerton 27:20
Julie. Thanks so much for your time.

Julie Pender 27:21
Thanks, Tom.

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