Spirits Strategies & Innovation Congress 2019

• Recognising indications of future health trends to create effective marketing strategies
• Understanding cultural shifts and the impact on consumer habits to maintain relevancy in an increasingly health conscious society
• Utilising health conscious messaging to meet needs of health conscious drinkers
• Using data as a tool to build a more accurate picture of target audience needs

• Where did the gin trend come from?
• What’s next for the gin category?
• What do we need to do to do to prepare for the future?

• What is a Signature Glass and Why should you care?
• Neurological Research and Scientific Proof
• Signature Glasses deliver the Perfect Serve

• Disrupting innovation to continue creating entertaining consumer experiences
• Recognising the need for brand experiences to maintain the indulgence factor
• Understanding how to create successful brand experiences to keep consumers engaged
• Ensuring brand experiences are authentic to maintain alignment with brand identity
• Separating brand identity from products to widen brand’s market potential
• Reviewing Current Kegged Cocktails to Understand How Quality is Preserved

• Receive your own promotion bottle and learn how the campaign would work
• Get online and test our online-label-editor and create your personal labels in the live session
• Receive your digitally printed labels on day 2
• Decorate your own bottle with your individualised labels

• Presenting the challenges faced when starting production of spirits using cannabis derived ingredients
• Discussing the effect this will have on the appetite of global beverage producers to enter the cannabis beverages space
• Spotlighting innovation across the global cannabis beverages market to predict the future success of cannabis & hemp infused spirits
• The “Top Beverages” story – understanding product formulation challenges and restrictions to marketing when launching into the European market

The beverage packaging industry is full of talk about green thinking, environmental sustainability, recyclability and innovative materials, but how many applications on the market today are truly green, and how much of it can be regarded as just a marketing ploy?

• The evolution of packaging from polluting materials and production processes to increasingly green-friendly concepts
• The 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
• There is also a fourth R, Re-think
• The obstacles to using green packaging
• Sustainable packaging: the key points

• What do bigger businesses look for in a successful start-up or a new brand?
• Acknowledging how brands can emphasise their USP to stand out in a competitive market
• How brands make investment choices to attract shareholders and expand
• Innovation versus acquisition, which is better?

• Consumer & Industry trends related to leaving traditional spirit categories
• Opening up to new ways of product formulation
• Authentic taste delivery
• Sustainability

This 30 minute onstage interview will discuss what Distill Ventures looks for in a brand, recent successes to provide attendees with food for thought for future success.

• Sharing insights into marketing spirits in an increasingly digital world to tap into a wider market
• Innovating with new approaches to engage younger adult consumers
• Staying savvy in the evolving 21st Century marketplace to improve brand perceptions
• Learning from examples of how retailers are changing with the times to increase brand traction
• Finding ways to build consumer loyalty through brand identity to fortify brand longevity

• Investigating how niche categories are driving towards more heritage-based brand identities to form compelling marketing strategies
• Understanding the process of how Mezcales is produced and enjoyed to increase brand awareness
• Recognising the need for educational initiatives to give consumers more industry knowledge and awareness in an increasingly expanding market.
• Negotiating the best partnership deals to avoid loss of brand authenticity through commercialisation of traditional spirits

• Resurrecting former trends to embrace established categories
• Exploring consumer demands for transparency, and health and wellness in products to capitalize on this emerging trend
• Understanding how established brands can cash in on the latest trends to avoid losing relevance
• Incorporating predictions into market strategy to capitalize on changing consumer demands

• Younger consumers are increasingly entering the alcohol consumption as a “social lubricant”. Limited role of drinking alone, opposite to previous generations
• Focusing on the “socially defining” role of alcohol. Key role of brands, from “alcholising coke” to more sophisticated and innovative consumption
• Highlighting the increased role of innovation: aperitifs, pink gin, draft beers, premium non-alcohol (not thirst quenching) directly competing in the same consumer need/occasion
• Understanding how premium non-alcohol drinks successfully competes with alcohol products in non-thirst quenching occasions

• Discover the world of Content Over Beverages as a marketing tool to boost your brand awareness and drive sales both on social and at the POC
• Find out how dressing up your drink can grab consumers’ attention at the POC in a way that cannot be ignored
• Learn about the Big Data Analytics tools that enable to measure your brand’s presence on social media and its dollar value

• Exploring why craft spirits appear to be following the same pathway as craft beer from ten years previously
• The rise of craft beer had several implications on brewers
• Will Craft Gin brands take share from bigger brands, or will they only remain relevant locally and be replaced by the next wave of craft spirits such as tequila’s, rums or aged whiskeys?

• The issue of definitions: Is a non-alcoholic spirit really a spirit? Discussing ABV specificities to determine category definitions and their implication on nomenclature
• Can low and no alcoholic spirits be considered a healthy alternative? Investigating sugar content to determine how to create a product for health conscious consumers
• Discussing the manufacturing of non-alcoholic spirits to better market premium products
• Analysing how this trend began to address how to fortify its presence in the market over the long-haul
• Exploring how to stand out on store shelves attract target audience
• Creating low and non-alcoholic alternatives of popular beverages to reach new audiences
• Discussing how to preserve great tasting flavours in low and non-alcoholic alternatives

• Understanding how public awareness campaigns (e.g. Dry January) can fuel brand creation to inspire ideation
• Investigating sugar content to determine how to create a product for health conscious consumers
• Exploring how Caleno use social media to stand out and attract target audience
• Discussing how to preserve great tasting flavours in low and non-alcoholic alternatives

Speaker Hosted Roundtables

Interactive roundtable sessions offer a unique opportunity to come together with your peers to share best practice and develop solutions to critical challenges facing the industry as a whole. Hosted by industry experts and each focused on a single issue, roundtables are an exciting, interactive way to build your personal network and learn from the experience and expertise of others.

Each roundtable session lasts for 45 minutes, and delegates may attend up to 2 roundtables

RT 1

Has Gin Reached its Peak? Discussing What’s Next for one of the most Popular Categories in Spirits

Jonathan Peacock, Customer Development, Strategy and Planning Director, Pernod Ricard

RT 2

IOT for spirits: Make your packaging smart, connect your closure!

Jean-Baptiste Delage, Export Sales Manager, Les Bouchages Delage

Anne-Hélène Delage, Purchasing Manager, Les Bouchages Delage

RT 3

Women in Spirits – Addressing Diversity and Inclusion to Create a Representative Industry

Kathy Canton, Founder, The Brighton Gin

• Understanding the importance of alcohol labelling requirements to avoid losing self-regulation
• Investing in unique design to forge a unique brand identity
• Retaining packaging style whilst staying within guidelines to avoid compromising design
• Exploring innovative design concepts to inspire creativity in design for packaging and labelling

• Changing consumer trends are forcing brands to be more agile and offer personalized packaging experiences
• As a result, packaging suppliers need to adopt their processes to offer highly differentiated packaging and personalization at low volumes and with shorter lead times
• Enabled by digital printing, O-I: EXPRESSIONS enables brands to create highly personalised and customised glass packaging at flexible volume, industrial speeds, and with an unprecedented range of colour and design possibilities… turning glass bottles into canvases

• An overview of how Fever-Tree shook up a dusty drinks category to reinvent the Gin & Tonic as we know it today and the future ahead of us.

Why would the Chief Designer of a FTSE 100 company spend time specifying the design of a toilet roll holder and assessing the microscopic texture on a bottle cap? 

• Outlining the importance of a coherent and compelling design strategy to understand why delivering every detail is critical
• Understanding how consumers are paying more attention to the detail and how to meet expectations
• Evaluating design and planning strategy to determine methods used to avoid missing the detail when designing new products
• Showcasing recent design wins from Diageo

• Forming a united front as producers to find affordable resources from suppliers
• Discussing direct distribution online to assess e-commerce as a means for circulation
• Understanding your brand’s USP and how this fits a partner/distributor’s dynamic to make the best choice
• Learning how to juggle different hats as a producer, distributor and bar owner to gain a good oversight of the industry
• Exploring how big brands choose partners to expand their market reach