Conor McQuaid – First Year

Conor McQuaid - First Year   Arguably the most influential role in the Irish whiskey sector and one year on from being appointed CEO and Chairman at Irish Distillers (IDL), we met with Conor McQuaid in their headquarters in Ballsbridge, Dublin.   IWM: Conor, can you give us a little bit about your background? CONOR: I’m a Louth man by birth. I grew up in Dundalk and ultimately went to university in Dublin City  University and did International marketing and language course there. I had a great opportunity to spend some time living and working in Spain as part of that course, but I’d always had the ambition to work in Irish Distillers and funnily enough I interviewed for Irish Distillers on a couple of occasions, one for the graduate program and subsequently one for Brand Managers job, neither of which I got. Eventually, on the third time of asking, I managed to secure a position in IDL and the career took off from there. It has been just a fantastic rollercoaster ride from then until now. I am just about to conclude 21 years in the business. 1998. Feels like a lifetime but it’s also been very short and gone by fairly quickly.   IWM: How do you see as your relationship with Pernod Ricard? CONOR: They’ve been fantastic for us over the years. Firstly, from a financial perspective, they’ve really supported the business, they’ve invested as it needed investment and sought to grow. I think any new or emerging whiskey distillery will say distribution and route to market is one of the biggest challenges and obviously that was something that Pernod Ricard provided for us. But I also think beyond that I think the philosophy, the culture of Pernod Ricard, it’s a very people-based organisation and the culture of IDL fitted seamlessly within the Pernod Ricard world. IWM: Being the biggest player in the market is there a burden and the sense of responsibility to lift the whole sector as well as yourselves to represent the industry worldwide? CONOR: I think it’s a responsibility, but I also think it’s not something that weighs heavy on our shoulders per se. I think if you go back and we recently launched our podcast series, the Story of Irish Whiskey, and you look at the early stage thinking of the families coming together to set aside their rivalries and to try and do right by rejuvenating a category that let’s be honest was on its knees and was about to die, that philosophy has permeated the culture of the business all the way through. We are about growing the Irish business, the Irish category, clearly we want our brands within that to be successful, but if there’s anything that we can do to support the wider industry in the right way to take its rightful place in the world of the preeminent whiskey categories of the world we will seek to do that and we will continue to focus on doing that in the right way.     IWM: We see many new distilleries opening and a lot of new products coming out. Are there any concerns you have about the number of them and the speed of growth? CONOR: No, I think ultimately, we’re still relatively small as a category in the overall world of whiskey so headroom and the growth of the opportunity should not be a constraining factor. That growth is phenomenal and it’s great to see, it’s bringing excitement to the category, it’s bringing new interesting brands. We’ll continue to collaborate and support but commercially and from a marketing perspective we’ll compete as best we can so that we can take our share of the growing opportunity that Irish whiskey is.   IWM: In terms of future markets, obviously the US is the biggest market, is there a tendency to be over-reliant on that market or is it that there are other markets that you see as becoming as significant or largely significant in the future? CONOR: I think our philosophy and the strategy that was adopted initially played to the heartland markets for Jameson in particular Irish whiskey per se so yes we focused on the US, yes we focused on Ireland and the UK to a degree, Germany and some of the mainland European markets. My challenge now is to keep momentum in the US, continue the opportunity that represents, recognising that we’re still relatively underdeveloped in certain states within the US so the phenomenon and the growth we’ve managed to achieve still has headroom. The mandate and the challenge that I was given when I was fortuitous enough to get this role was to focus on the globalisation of the opportunity beyond the North American and Western European markets. We will drive into Africa with a clear focus, we will obviously take very clear steps in Asia, which we are doing, and ultimately Latin America presents an opportunity albeit further down the continuum of what we need to do.     IWM: The growth has been there for 15 to 20 years. Is there pressure to keep that going and is it sustainable for a longer period of time? CONOR: The focus on Jameson and the focus on gaining that wider distribution footprint across the world that still gives us huge headroom and as I mentioned the US market with 3.5 million cases a year we haven’t topped out there, not by a long way, so we’re still very bullish that the growth can continue and again we look relatively small in the broader world of whiskey so with 4% of global whiskey the category has in itself a lot of headroom. Beyond that, what will we do? We will continue to innovate, and we will continue to try and bring the new propositions and new ideas to the consumer.   IWM: What are the core values of Irish Distillers? How do you share them with your staff and with your customers? CONOR: We talk about three key values from an Irish Distillers perspective, we want real, remarkable and responsible people. Each of those is laden with meaning but and it’s not corporate speak. Real, we want to be true and authentic. We want to be people that others like to do business with, collaborative with people within the industry and indeed with the consumer. Being authentic and being yourself with everyone you come in contact is very important. Remarkable, ultimately we are all very conscious that we are guardians of this business, we will pass through and pass it to subsequent generations as we are obviously receiving all the assets of this business for a  particular period of time, so doing remarkable     IWM: What are the core values of Irish Distillers? How do you share them with your staff and with your customers? CONOR: We talk about three key values from an Irish Distillers perspective, we want real, remarkable and responsible people. Each of those is laden with meaning but and it’s not corporate speak. Real, we want to be true and authentic. We want to be people that others like to do business with, collaborative with people within the industry and indeed with the consumer. Being authentic and being yourself with everyone you come in contact is very important. Remarkable, ultimately we are all very conscious that we are guardians of this business, we will pass through and pass it to subsequent generations as we are obviously receiving all the assets of this business for a  particular period of time, so doing remarkable things with the resources that we have and with the great reservoir of brilliant whiskeys that we make in Midleton is in itself a real pleasure. Responsible, in that at the end of the day, it’s imperative that we market and promote our whiskeys in a manner that is responsible both to the consumer and how they enjoy them. Holding true to those three values is the due North for all of us here in Irish Distillers.     - "it’s imperative that we market and promote our whiskeys in a manner that is responsible both to the consumer and how they enjoy them" -     IWM: You mentioned the heritage factor and the fact that you are dealing with a company that is over two hundred years old. Is there that sense of protecting that heritage, is that responsibility, a burden? How does that impact you? CONOR: I think we have to be conscious of it. As our podcast, A Story Of Irish Whiskey alludes to, the industry nearly died, I mean it was on its knees, and without those people coming together and setting aside their rivalries as they did we wouldn’t be here today, so we can only stand on the shoulders of those giants that went before us and carry that legacy with a sense of responsibility. The history and heritage are tangible, it’s within all aspects of who we are. But we can’t ultimately be judged by what happened in the past, we’re setting forth to really cast our eye on the future and continue the great growth trajectory that we have been on. It’s a great responsibility, it’s also very liberating to say that that knowledge, that tradition and that expertise is still alive and well in the business, and all that we must do is pass it on to the next generation in better shape than we received it.   IWM: Can you explain the impact of social media and web 2 technologies and podcasts, and technologies that weren’t around twenty years ago, how you’re embracing those and what the challenges and opportunities are? CONOR: It’s the fundamentals of marketing in the 21st century that you have all those consumer touchpoints to hand and that you’re leveraging them appropriatel