The Big Interview: James Lousada, CEO, Carlsberg

Would you employ controversial cricket star Kevin Pietersen? James Lousada would. The new-ish Carlsberg UK CEO (he stepped into the top job at the beginning of this year) is on the lookout for mavericks to join his team as part of a strategy of “disruption”.

“I’d like to be known for bringing a new culture into the organisation. I want people to say, ‘I’m surprised at what Carlsberg UK has done, I never would have expected that of them.’ Getting people to talk about us like that is a key part of how we’ll measure our success and, if we achieve it, I think we’ll have broken out of the mould of being just another brewer.”

Home boy

On the surface, Lousada doesn’t come across as much of a maverick: a Home Counties boy, he still lives in leafy Surrey, following a childhood in Buckinghamshire. He was a keen rower, which led him to Reading University where he studied business and economics, and was headed for a career in the city but a moratorium on hiring, after the 1987 crash, led him instead to a career as a “blue chip FMCG marketer”.

In his time, he has looked after brands such as St Ivel, Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Marmite. He also did a stint at a dotcom start-up called Vizzavi and then a move into wine came via Southcorp (latterly Foster’s EMEA and now known as Treasury Wine Estates) and Constellation Europe (now Accolade Wines) where he moved from the marketing department to general management.

His career highlight, however, was during a stint at Anheuser-Busch, where he looked after Budweiser in the late 1990s, bringing us the famous “wassup” ads and the Bud- Weis-Er frogs, as well as a campaign, that was voted the best of the 1998 Football World Cup.

“An American beer has no right to be the most successful brand during a football World Cup but we did it. I got incredibly lucky at that time, I was only in my early 30s and running a team of energetic young people, and everything we touched just seemed to work.

“It was about disruption and thinking differently. In those days at Bud, we had the licence to do that and we were open to new ideas. The only way you can be successful, in my mind, is to be constantly changing and to build a culture where that is embedded, where people want to look at the next big thing rather than what they did yesterday.”

Change

To this end he is looking to recruit people to several new roles in the business to “manage change, manage complex problems and to come up with something new.” His first hire was confirmed just last week with the appointment of Darran Britton as on-trade sales director, alongside an equivalent hire for the off-trade.

There are also plans for more boots on the ground for the free-trade sales team, as Lousada builds on the brewer’s “fairly aggressive ambition” to target growth through this sector.

“Many of our competitors have found the free trade a hard route to market to service and we think that’s an opportunity for us.

“Not just because we’ve got more people out there, and not just because we’ve got great brands, but also because we’ve got a really good, broad offering so when our guys walk through the door they can offer a great wine service, a great spirits service, a great craft beer service and a whole series of add-ons that they currently can’t get from other people. We talk internally about being a partner for the free trade rather than a supplier."

The company’s We Deliver More portal has been a key part of this strategy. Launched in 2009, the service essentially functions as a head office for free-of-tie licensees, offering everything from point-of-sale material, to training, to discounts on a BT Sport subscription (a partnership Lousada describes as a “real force” and one he hopes will become a “long-term relationship”). Having finally lost its first-to-market advantage (Heineken launched its version, Heineken Online, last May), the team is under pressure to improve the We Deliver More offer.

“We are adding little bits as we go along, but I think the proposition needs to be further advanced. I see some of the stuff Heineken has done and I don’t think we are behind yet, but I do think we need to take further steps to improve it. For me, that will be our priority next year.”

Pivotal year

Indeed 2015 promises to be a pivotal year for Lousada, particularly as this year proved to be something of a baptism by fire, when an IT system upgrade was beset with issues. It left licensees across the country with delayed, incomplete and, in some cases, no deliveries for weeks.

“I found this personally very frustrating. I was nine weeks into the role and for some time we were way below our own, and our customers’ expectations.”

There was clearly a cost to the business, although Lousada won’t put a number on it, and it also meant he spent much of the first year at the helm “talking to customers about a poor performance” and subsequently in damage-limitation mode.

“It’s the cost to reputation, that’s the thing that hurts the most. You build a reputation up over a long period of time and you can lose it just like that. There’s no question that in some of our customers’ minds we let them down incredibly badly and we lost some in the process — but we also had some who went elsewhere and then came back."

With this behind him, 2015 will be a year in which Lousada promises the core Carlsberg brand will get some more love and attention; the Somersby brand will get some more variants and the business will focus on world and craft beer.

It is also a general election year, and the issue of taxation will return to the fore, with Lousada hoping for another drop in beer duty — and this time more than a penny. His confidence is based on a feeling that the industry’s message, about its benefits to the local and national economy, has got through — he cites British Beer & Pub Association data showing £400m of investment has come into the industry since the duty cut a year ago (a figure that far exceeds what was invested the previous year).

As the cut itself was only worth £40m, he believes this demonstrably shows that a cut in taxation gives businesses more confidence to invest.

“In an international business like mine, in which people are making choices about where to invest, if they see a taxation environment that is difficult and getting worse, they will think hard about investing. “If they see a Government that is thinking differently about the industry, and taking a small step in reducing taxation, then the way they look at investment in a market like ours will be very different.”

UK investment?

Lousada admits it can be difficult to justify investment in the UK against other opportunities for the wider Carlsberg Group — the “big bet” is happening in Asia, where the company bought 26 breweries last year — but he is convinced of the case.

“If we can find opportunities to enhance and protect our position here, whether that is through licensing deals or acquisitions, I think the group will be interested.

“Quite simply, the vision is to become the best beer and beverage business in the UK and that comes about by having the best brands, the best people and the best service. The legacy of that will be creating a significantly more profitable and sustainable business that encourages inward investment from our business in the long term.”

And to achieve that, Lousada believes he not only needs to create a foundation of solid selling and marketing practices, but also to shake-up the culture at Carlsberg to allow for “more wins”. And for that he needs some Kevin Pietersens.

“Absolutely I do. Part of my role is about managing people and sometimes you have to go in and smooth a few ruffled feathers. But, actually, if you don’t want that disruption, and people thinking differently, then you become pretty pedestrian, and we can’t be a pedestrian organisation. I want people like Kevin. I just don’t want a whole business of them.”

My kind of pub — Malt Shovel Tavern, Northampton​

This is a fantastic local pub and it’s about 25 yards from the front door of Carlsberg brewery in Northampton. There’s a huge range of beers, including 22 Belgian beers, a roaring fire and decent food — especially the pie.

It’s just the sort of place you want to go, find a corner seat and be there all evening.

CV​

Key dates:

• 1988:​ James Lousada joins Unigate, and works on St Ivel
• 1993​: Moves to the US-owned Bestfoods, owner of Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Marmite
• 1996:​ Joins Anheuser-Busch as marketing director
• 1998:​ Budweiser “One World, One Game, One Beer” campaign is voted best at the World Cup
• 1999:​ Lousada and his team launch Bud Light to the UK
• 2001​: Vodafone and Universal Studios back dotcom start-up Vizzavi, which Lousada joins as head of brand marketing
• 2002​: Lousada joins Southcorp as marketing director
• 2005​: Foster’s Group buys Southcorp for A$3.2bn, making Lousada European marketing director for Foster’s EMEA
• 2008: ​Constellation Europe makes Lousada commercial director
• 2008:​ Constellation Europe chief Troy Christensen leaves to run the company’s Australian arm and Lousada becomes European GM
• 2011​: Constellation Europe acquired by Champ and renamed Accolade Wines
• 2013​: Carlsberg UK appoints Lousada as sales director
• 2014​: Lousada takes the helm as CEO of Carlsberg UK