One of the world’s biggest alcoholic drinks companies has urged other
businesses to copy its idea of creating a marketing review board that
advises on responsible product marketing.
Allied Domecq formed the board two years ago to enable external
stakeholders to help to decide how it should sell alcohol-based
products. Now the first annual review of the board’s activities has
concluded that its advice has been invaluable and that, ‘given our
experience, we would encourage other companies to engage in similar
dialogues with external stakeholders’.
In the review Allied Domecq reveals that advice from the marketing
board’s members has led the company to abandon or modify a number of
proposed marketing campaigns that could have been deemed irresponsible.
These included decisions to restrict a marketing campaign that used
Catwoman to promote its Kahlua drink because this might appeal to
under-age drinkers, and to refrain from sponsoring motor sports events
on the grounds that alcohol and driving do not mix. However, the board
has also upheld marketing strategies about which the company had
doubts.
The board has six external members – among them Hugh Burkitt, director
of the Marketing Society, and José Massaguer, a law professor in Spain
– plus five from Allied Domecq, including Simon Stewart, senior
vice-president of marketing.
Its decisions are not binding, but external member Lisa Keegan, who is
head of the US-based Keegan company consultancy and a member of the
Arizona House of Representatives, said its advice has been taken
seriously. ‘It is absolutely clear to me that there is no element of
window-dressing here,’ she said.
‘This is a cultural shift in the organization and our role as a largely
external group is taken extremely seriously.’ Keegan said the decision
to refrain from motor sports sponsorship had convinced her of the
board’s clout: ‘It was a potentially huge advertising opportunity, and
other companies had already decided they would take advantage of it,
but we said no … and the chief executive was right behind us on it.’
Allied Domecq, which had turnover of £3.3billion ($5.7bn) last year and
also owns food brands such as Dunkin’ Donuts, has been keen to
establish itself as a drinks sector leader on responsible marketing. It
has seen the board as central to its attempts to answer growing public
and governmental concerns about binge drinking, especially in the UK.
Philip Bowman, Allied Domecq’s chief executive, said there had been
doubts about the board from several quarters, but they had proved to be
unfounded. ‘People queued up giving me reasons why it wouldn’t work –
that creativity would be stifled, that we’d not be able to do what our
competitors do, and that actions and campaigns would be delayed,’ he
said. ‘But none of those dire warnings have actually been borne out in
practice.’
Ben Eavis, group social policy manager, added that, far from
restricting marketing ideas, the board had ‘made us think more deeply
and creatively about the essence of our brands’.
