Building a launch pad for take-off

Creating a successful product is a challenge - as Diageo knows, after a few failed launches. Its head of innovation talks frankly to Nigel Huddleston

New product launches are 10-a-penny in the eager-to-please drinks industry, but on-the-record briefings to outline the demise of what only a few months earlier were considered exciting new brands are much less common. That it's the topic of the first press interview with Diageo GB's new head of innovation, Liz Finn, who's been in the job for just two months, is even more remarkable.

A more usual course of action for someone in Finn's position is to rush out the next piece of innovation and take all the credit. But she seems unconcerned about fronting the end-of-the-road story on brands she wasn't around to see born.

"We shouldn't be afraid of everything not being successful," she says. "There's nothing to fear, because a high number of innovations do fail. If you looked back through the list of new product launches from three years ago, half of them wouldn't be there any longer."

Getting the message across

Of the current crop of Diageo launches, Quinn's didn't even last that long. Quinn's (an RTD made of fermented fruit juice rather than spirit with added flavour) sounded great if you had a Diageo marketing person to explain it, but getting the message across to consumers in three words on a poster was more tricky.

"It's not that the communication was all wrong," Finn argues, "but rather, that it was hard and we didn't get it across sufficiently for it to work. It's very hard to pinpoint one thing and identify it as the bit that didn't work."

With hindsight, might it not have been better to hang the idea of a more natural RTD on the back of an established brand?

"Quinn's versus Smirnoff?" muses Finn. "You might think that doing something with Smirnoff would surely have been easier. With everything else we've done on Smirnoff, I don't know whether a fermented fruit proposition would have been credible or acceptable to consumers. It's a difficult one to call."

The other discontinued brands - Archers Vea, Slate 20, and J&B -6°C - all seemed to suffer, to a lesser or greater extent, from a lack of consumer understanding of what they were supposed to be about, rather than any shortcomings of the product or packaging.

At times, people who actually worked for the company struggled to explain the name,

-6°C, which was a reference to the temperature at which the whisky was filtered.

The whisky's fortunes contrast sharply with those of Pimm's Winter, introduced at about the same time and doing well largely because it's an easier sell.

Finn says: "You might have quite a complex product that is hard to make, but if you can't explain what it is you face problems. Consumers should be able to tell us in a few words what something is about. When you say Pimm's Winter, you don't need three words of copy underneath."

Finn acknowledges that Archers Vea also struggled to communicate its reduced-sugar message to consumers, and that something similar to Bacardi Breezer's simpler half-sugar branding may, in retrospect, have been a better option.

"The company [Bacardi] has done a very good job and what the product offers against the rest is very clear. It had the same insight, delivered it differently and seems to be doing very well."

Recipes for success

Finn says that the issue for Slate 20 was that the Slate whiskey brand on which it was based was little-known outside Australia. Slate 20's success in Australia influenced the decision to try it in the UK.

"It is not a mistake to look at other markets," says Finn. "But it's a mistake to assume that because something's been successful elsewhere, it will be successful here. But if a brand is successful in another market, that's a good start, as opposed to creating something from scratch that has not been proven."

Performances of Diageo's dark and golden rum brands in overseas markets are being tracked as part of a possible plan to enter the category in the UK, with Pampero from Venezuela on the shortlist.

Finn says: "It's a great product, which gives us some confidence. We don't have any plans at the moment, but we are testing Pampero, among other things, as part of that option."

Finn indicates that she expects future innovation work to involve fewer national launches and a greater emphasis on test markets with individual trade customers.

And Diageo isn't ready to give up on the RTD market just yet, despite the demise of three products in one hit.

"The ready-to-drink category is interesting but difficult. It's worth a great deal of money to us and our customers, but just putting another product in another bottle in the chiller isn't going to do it.

"But if you look back to what 'ready-to-drink' really means, and try to block out Smirnoff Ice or WKD, its broader meaning should give us other opportunities.

"The idea of packaged drinks will remain important, but whether they will look exactly like what's out there already or move on is really worth exploring."

Cider is one option already ruled out after a tiny test for Cashel's Extra Smooth, with the feeling that Magners and the rest are already too far ahead of the game.

"Magners cleverly reinvented the ritual, in a similar way to the iPod. Sometimes people stumble across a good innovation, but its size and scale turns out to be more accidental."

Doing for spirits or RTDs what Magners did for cider is a big task - but Finn won't be afraid to give it a go.

Liz Finn: CV l 1985-1992 Unilever, in marketing and innovation l 1992-1995 Cadbury Schweppes, in European marketing l 1995-2004 Future Brand, managing director l 2004-2007 Dragon, director of packaging l April 2007 Joined Diageo, head of innovation GB

Finn's verdict on recent Diageo New-Product Development

Quinn's

"In the end the sales didn't hit our target - so yes, consumers didn't buy it. The insight was right, but what we were trying to do - category-breaking stuff, not just another flavour - is extremely hard."

Slate 20

"The consumer insight was that young male consumers want a more masculine ready-to-drink product, and I'd still stand by that. It tastes really good, but we launched a stand-alone Slate 20 that didn't have a parent brand in this country. With hindsight, we realised how hard it was to create a new brand in that category."

J&B -6°C

"If you take a very strong J&B market such as Spain, whisky is the number-one spirit and range extensions do better. We've become more of a white-spirits market; Scotch

is a difficult one to crack. This was one

opportunity we saw to bring new consumers into Scotch and as far as we're concerned, it hasn't performed sufficiently well."

Archers Vea

"Female consumers want reduced sugar and are worried about how many calories they're consuming. Rather than creating a product variant, however, we created a sub-brand, but I don't think it was always clear what that sub-brand was about. In the long-term and in terms of what it requires to sustain

it, we decided that it wasn't the way we wanted to go."

Pimm's Winter

"The brand team has done a very good job of establishing what Pimm's is about, so the name of Pimm's Winter doesn't demand a lot to work out what it's for, and when it is intended to be drunk. Its simplicity is one of its cleverest aspects and key to its success."

Bulleit

"This is continuing to do well. It's growing and its rate of sale is strong. It's one we're committed to and that we think is exciting."

Baileys flavours

"Communicating a mint-chocolate flavour is easier than communicating something such as Quinn's. It's not that one's right and one's wrong - it's just a simpler message."

Guinness Red

"This has only been in test for 14 weeks. We're waiting to see what happens over a long period. Having said that, we're pleased with the test results we've had so far."