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00:00:01
Breaking Through the Noise: Marketing Irish Whiskey Across the Ocean
220 Plays1 year ago
In this week's episode of Marketing Spark, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jarlath Watson, the principal at the Echlinville Distillery in Northern Ireland.
We discussed how a product, specifically Irish whiskey, can expand its market and attract new customers across the ocean.
Echlinville has become a renowned brand in the Irish whiskey market, with its high-quality and award-winning products expanding to 27 countries worldwide.
But how does it differentiate itself from other Irish whiskeys and break into new markets with limited marketing and sales dollars? Let's dive into the marketing strategies of Echlinville and learn from their success.
One of the key strategies of Echlinville is building brand loyalty through its heritage, tradition, history, and craft, as well as having really good liquid.
They rely on influencers, bloggers, and writers to promote their brand online, but they also emphasize the importance of face-to-face marketing in breaking through the noise of digital marketing.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jarlath Watson and Aikenville Distillery
00:00:09
Speaker
I usually talk to B2B marketers and entrepreneurs on the podcast because they provide great insight and they're my target audience. But on this episode of Marketing Spark, we're doing something different. I'm excited to welcome Jarlath Watson, the principal at the Aikenville Distillery, located on the picturesque Arts Peninsula in Northern Ireland. It's one of the few independent distilleries in the country.
Aikenville's Spirits and Canadian Expansion
00:00:36
Speaker
Under Jarlath's leadership, the distillery is renowned for its high-quality and award-winning products. It produces a range of spirits, including gin, pot gin, and vodka. But its flagship product is Irish whiskey. A friend of mine, Jason Nykor, has been working with Jarlath to bring Eikenville's products to Canada. And I was curious about how a product jumps across the ocean to attract new customers. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Mark. Morning. Thanks for having me.
Unique On-site Production Approach
00:01:05
Speaker
Let's start by providing some background into the distilleries history, where its products are sold and talk about your role. As we were talking before the podcast, you're not only the chief financial officer, but you're the person responsible for blending and mixing the whiskeys. That's an interesting role. It keeps you busy. It keeps you busy. You have two-day jobs.
00:01:27
Speaker
Exynville Distillery. Gotta have to condense 20 years history into a two minute bite here or so. We're based on the Arts Peninsula in the north of Ireland, about 25 miles south of Belfast. We're on the most easterly point of Ireland. We're a filleted last distillery. And what that means is we're built on a farm. We're built on an old farm estate dating back to the 1740s. Exynville Estate. We're quite unique in that we
00:01:56
Speaker
From ploughing the fields, growing the barley, floor motoring the barley, mash ferment, distill, mature, and bottle, we do everything on site. And we're probably the only guys in Ireland that have that approach. So we take providence to the nth degree and that everything is done within one 50-acre farm and within one 18-acre site within the distiller.
00:02:21
Speaker
And we've been with you since 2005, 2004, we built our new distillery in 2013. And like you say, we're working with Jason in Ontario, trying to bring those and other actual full products into the market.
International Expansion and USA Deals
00:02:38
Speaker
Where is the whiskey sold? And what's been your expansion program over the last few years as the distillery has gained momentum and become more popular?
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, so we've probably been sold now in, I think, 27 countries worldwide. And that will range from a lot of Europe, most of Western Central Europe, obviously Ireland and the UK first. Then you went to Western Central Europe, bit of Eastern Europe. We're now moving into Africa. We've signed up great partners in South Africa, and we're looking at Kenya and different countries in South Africa. We're also heading into Australasia, currently Australia, looking at New Zealand, different markets.
00:03:20
Speaker
We're in three provinces in Canada currently, let us say with GSA with GSA in Port Wines and Whiskies in Ontario. That was the first connection with Canada. And as of last week, we have signed a really big, a big deal for us. We've just signed up to be distributed by Saffirat by 375 in USA. So one of the largest companies in the world have taken done those on in the largest Irish whisky market in the world, which is the US, your near neighbours.
00:03:50
Speaker
I guess it's a funny one Mark with whiskey. You have to build a reputation. You have to build a name for yourself and get gravitas, but you want sales. So there's two ways of doing that. First thing is we all make white spirits because white spirits get to market quicker than whiskey that has to age. But on your whiskey side, you tend to, I guess you tend to, in the first days, you tend to go into market with whatever options you have.
00:04:20
Speaker
And then as your brand grows over the years, you tend to reposition your product, and you tend then to go out and look for that tier one, tier two, national distributor in the largest markets. And I guess that's where we are currently. We're trying to reposition our brands within the markets, and we're going from reasonable distributors to tier one, tier two, national distributors, i.e.
Brand Positioning and Market Differentiation
00:04:44
Speaker
375 and software out in the States.
00:04:46
Speaker
You can't do that in the first days, but whenever you build a brand to a level that it has for permission, then you can do that. That is the next step in our progression. In my world, where there are dozens, if not hundreds of companies selling the same types of software,
00:05:06
Speaker
I spend a lot of time on brand positioning and helping companies differentiate themselves in some way from the competition. If you don't stand out, then you get lost in the crowd. And that's a very dangerous place to be if you're selling a product that looks and feels like everybody else's. And I know this is a difficult question when it comes to taste and products like whiskey.
00:05:32
Speaker
But how do you differentiate your product from all the other Irish whiskies out there, let alone other types of whiskies so that you stand out and that people know you for something? Now, it may be the company's Irish heritage. It may be your history. It may be the brand that you've built over the last 20 years. But talk about differentiation and how you make that happen.
00:06:00
Speaker
There's two aspects to that for us within Doneville and within actionville. The first aspect is differentiating your liquid, differentiating your whiskey. That comes quite naturally to us. That comes quite easy. We acquired an old brand called Doneville's Irish Whiskey. Doneville's Irish Whiskey was the largest Belfast brand dating back to 1808.
00:06:22
Speaker
In the 1800s, whenever Irish Whiskery was the king of spirits worldwide, 70% of all brown spirits sold in the world was Irish Whiskery. The Canadian Struts and Bourbon were fighting for the other 30% and Irish was 70%. Donville's was the largest brand in the world. The largest distillery in the world was based in Belfast, Donville's Irish Whiskery.
00:06:43
Speaker
masters of marketing back in the 1800s, 56 markets worldwide, 27 offices throughout the world, Dunville's artifacts, mirrors etc will still adorn all the best wishy pubs around the world. We acquired this old brand and we were very aware that we could have stood accused of taking an old brand and trying to milk it. So we overcompensated it by making extremely good whiskey. I guess we make whiskey without compromise. So differentiating
00:07:12
Speaker
Our liquids differentiate themselves by the sheer quality of a liquid. We do very, very long craft maturations in old world European crafts, cherries, ports, fortified wines. We also use rum craft from the Caribbean.
00:07:29
Speaker
those casts that would have been a bout in the 1850s, 1860s, whenever Irish Whisky was, the largest spirit in the world. So we make exceptionally high-end, single-mountain blends, furnished for long times and very, very good sherry casts. We take the best Whisky we can get, or we put it in the best cast in the world, and we leave it for as long as it takes. We win hordes of awards. Last year at the Irish Whisky Awards, I think there was 11 Whisky categories. We won five of them.
00:07:57
Speaker
including winning the best overall whiskey in Ireland. Now, for a young discerator actionable, which is still family owned, that's a massive achievement. If I can get my whiskey onto your lips, you will buy my whiskey. As was proven yesterday at the Spirit of Toronto show, we did a masterclass before it started with 60 people.
00:08:18
Speaker
They tasted the whiskey, they came out in the master's house, told their mate, and our stand was the busiest stand at the show. For a small brand in Jacksonville, we were the busiest stand at the show. That's all about liquid on lips. So making good liquid, we find, not easy, but if you just adhere to those core principles of making whiskey without compromise, so we can differentiate our spirit quite easily.
00:08:42
Speaker
Differentiating your brand takes a lot more work, and if it didn't, you guys wouldn't have jobs. So differentiating your brand is a lot harder, and we are experts in making history, building brands, maybe not so much yet.
00:08:59
Speaker
So, but we build on the whiskey heritage of Ireland and North Belfast. So we, we resurrect old Irish whiskey brands and this really done with those, which make single malt and blends. We then brought back old tromper. Old tromper was a distillery 12 miles from our distillery. It closed down in 1957. It was our old distillery. So we brought that brand back that dozen Irish pot still, a different type of whiskey. We try and take those old brands
00:09:28
Speaker
We rely very heavily on the traditional inheritance of what those brands were. And then we try and slowly bring that into a modern era. So we will be very sympathetic to the old labels, to the old brand, and to the old brand values and messages, the core values of the company. And we will slowly, slowly add a modern contemporary twist to that.
00:09:55
Speaker
I think that's a very interesting strategy because as a small operation with limited marketing and sales dollars, you need to be as savvy and as creative as possible. So the fact that you're taking products with brand equity that have a history, that have recognition is a very interesting move. And I think it's very savvy on your part. The question that I have is that there's many companies in my world
00:10:24
Speaker
have very good products and they spend a lot of time listening to customers and enhancing the product so that they deliver a lot of value. The challenge
00:10:33
Speaker
is making sure that you can, what I call, pollinate that message to the world, is that people can actually become aware of the products that you make. Because if you make great product and no one knows about it, then you don't have a business. You have a hobby for the most part. I know you're not a marketer. I know that you're the chief bottle washer and the guy who counts the dollars and cents.
00:10:56
Speaker
What type of marketing does the distillery do? And what's the vision right now when you look at the marketing landscape and the fact that you want to get your message out? Are you going to do your own marketing? Are you going to rely on distributors to make it happen for you? What's that mixed look like?
Marketing Strategies and Brand Advocacy
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah. So I guess for us, we are a small family owned distillery. Our budget is probably one thousandth of what the multinationals might have.
00:11:23
Speaker
And our network is a lot smaller, albeit that is building. So again, I guess we have to rely to a certain extent on the marketing expertise on the preference that our distributors have in market. And that's the really important thing about moving to those tier one, tier two distributors who
00:11:41
Speaker
who are in-market, they have people on the ground, they have the connections with the best on-trade and off-trade accounts in the country. And they know how to sell booze in their country. For us, obviously, online marketing is a huge reach. We can maximise that, or we can try to maximise that. We try and build brand advocates with people from the heartstrings.
00:12:08
Speaker
And that ties back to brands with heritage and tradition. People who drink with Greek tend to appreciate heritage, tradition, history, craft, and they want to buy into your brand. They want to finish an action with a brand. So that brand loyalty is there for you if you want to embrace it. So we try and build brand advocates throughout a whole network of different people, from bloggers to
00:12:37
Speaker
to influencers, to marketeers, to writers, to whoever. And if we can tell our story to them, they will go out and tell our story for us. They will have influence and they will have rates that possibly we don't have. And again, that ties back to being, to having credibility, to having a story and to having really good liquid, because people will then want to go out and advocate your brand. So we're not a company that can throw
00:13:05
Speaker
a lot of dollars around with big campaigns. Smaller companies rely on that than what we would call grilling marketing. I guess we're slowly moving away from that smaller grilling marketing into the larger campaigns, but it's going to be a while yet.
00:13:25
Speaker
I'm glad that you talked about influencer marketing because from the outside looking in it's a very sexy compelling concept. The idea of finding people who have large followings who are influential, who have credibility and thought leadership in the marketplace is very attractive and you want to associate your product with
00:13:47
Speaker
their brands and their track records. But one of the challenges is that there's a lot of competition for influencers. Lots of people want to be associated with them. And the other thing is being able to identify the influencers that are relevant to your product and as important are going to do a good job of being evangelists and advocates as opposed to simply taking your product and you simply being part of their overall influencer mix.
00:14:14
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about Aikenville's strategy when it comes to influencer marketing? How do you identify the people that matter to you and how do you nurture and monitor that relationship so that it's a win-win proposition? I guess for us, that started off in our home markets. That started off in Ireland and in the UK. The wishing community tends to be
00:14:39
Speaker
quite small in its core and quite tight-knit, but very active. And like I say, it's an industry that people want to feed apart of and want to know and want to know everything about. They want to know everything about you. The people that become influencers in your home market, you tend to identify quite quickly. You tend to know them as friends because you're meeting them, you're meeting them with taste in your face, you're meeting them at whiskey shows.
00:15:02
Speaker
You're online talking about the same stuff. So that's easier. The key bit to that is once they taste your product and hear your story, they're very quick at calling it the bullshit from the real deal. And if you're not the real deal, they will call that out very quickly and they will not have time for you.
00:15:21
Speaker
I guess whenever you try and go to foreign markets, to far off markets, that becomes a lot more difficult. Again, we have more visibility in the US as to who's doing what. We have a bit of visibility in Canada as to who's doing what. Once you get into maybe Central Europe, maybe into
00:15:40
Speaker
regions with different languages and that becomes a lot harder so you do rely then on the networks of people you know who know people and you do rely on those introductions and again
00:15:53
Speaker
People, what they find is that people are not willing to make those introductions unless they have faith in you. It's in their reputation to know. So I guess at that point, we are relying on people we know and further out networks. And again, going back to our distributor base and feeding through our distributors who are in market and who do know the lie of the land in that area.
00:16:21
Speaker
One of the things you mentioned is the fact that, well, a lot of companies depend on digital marketing. Face-to-face marketing is really important. And before we jumped on this recording, you talked about the fact that you're on a multi-city tour throughout North America. And I think that one of the challenges for many companies is that there's so much digital marketing being thrown at them or inundated with
00:16:50
Speaker
social media and content marketing and videos and it's hard sometimes to break through and think a lot of brands are looking at a return to real world marketing going to conferences going to events hosting dinners or master classes like you did in Toronto yesterday curious about.
00:17:09
Speaker
your approach and your company's approach to physical marketing in which you're making relationships and you're meeting people and you're building your network and you're building more to mouth and actually getting people to experience the product and tell stories about the product. Is that a key part of your marketing thrust? It's the very core of it in that, like you say, the online is a very noisy place. You're constantly bombarded with messages from
00:17:38
Speaker
100 different brands in any one day, in any one field. The human nature, we tend to just learn to block that out. It doesn't register with you. You can have online marketing thrown at you all day, every day, and very little of it will actually register with you. You have to make that register with people. You have to make them aware of those before
00:18:02
Speaker
make them aware of something about Dundall and then what and then the online marketing starts to register with them. We find the best way to do that is just to get into market, to get into bars, to get into Wifke shows, to get into consumer events. Wifke's a different industry Mark. Wifke is about, in its very essence and it's very hard, Wifke is about me pouring you a glass. We sit down, we share a story.
00:18:25
Speaker
Whiskey is not about pouring eight whiskies and getting whatever. That lends itself very well to consumer events. I can sit and pour people three or four whiskies. I can tell them the story of our distillery. I can ask them what they like, why they like it, you know, what resonates and doesn't resonate with them and form those connections. Once you do that, the rest of the marketing starts to resonate with them. It gets through their filters and it registers with them. The job of the
00:18:55
Speaker
of the consumer events of the face-to-face tastings of having a chat over with it, it's to break down the filters so as the rest of your message gets through to them. That makes sense. In my world, it's hard to taste software, but you can experience software and you can be shown how it works and why it's relevant to you. The other
00:19:15
Speaker
Major thing is, as you mentioned, storytelling. Because if you want to get somebody into your world, if you want to show that you're empathetic to what they think and feel and do, and that you've got something that differentiates you from everybody else, storytelling is an awesome way to make that happen.
00:19:34
Speaker
I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about moving into new markets. Obviously, Jason has helped you penetrate the Ontario market. And for those who aren't familiar, the LCBO, Liquor Control Board of Ontario, was the biggest purchaser of alcohol in the world. So to break into Ontario, to break through with the LCBO, is a major accomplishment.
00:19:55
Speaker
Can you talk about your growth strategy when it comes to international markets? How do you identify the markets that you want to move into? And what kind of research do you do to make sure that there's demand for the product that you're selling? I guess our growths have to be very controlled. We're not like the software business. You can create as many copies of your software as there is people to buy it. We have to make whiskey. We have to lay down whiskey for
00:20:21
Speaker
our youngest wifters five, six years old, our oldest wifters 22 years old currently, and it will get older. If I want to sell you a bottle of 22 year old wiftery, I have to make that 22 years ago. So I've only a certain amount of that to sell. I can't take that to 55 new markets this year.
00:20:37
Speaker
are grown to leave 53 of them very disappointed and with empty shelves. Even our youngest product at five years old relies on what was made five years ago. We work with limited stocks, so it's a matter of identifying the martyrs you want to be in, and then you identify how much product that you can allocate to that martyr in any given year.
00:21:01
Speaker
And you make sure that that works, because the last thing you want to do is not have supply chains that are not fulfilled. You're better off not in-market than having unfulfilled supply chains. So I guess we sit down. We actually work very closely with Invest NI and bodies like that, Board B and bodies like that, who will have all the necessary data on consumers, on
Controlled International Growth and Market Selection
00:21:27
Speaker
what price points and what skews are being sold in those markets so we identify markets that we are we are not we are not a bargain basement with few brand we're a premium other premium with few brand you know we range from seven year old single malts up to 22 year old or seven year old blends
00:21:44
Speaker
to 22 year old single malt. So we're not fighting in a different restore area. We're in that upmarket liquor store, upmarket, the best bar accounts in the cities, et cetera, et cetera. We identify that and then we work, it's more about what stock we have to allocate and then what growth we want in what regions. And it really is done on a case by case basis interest. And again, if we cannot identify that
00:22:12
Speaker
that correct distributor for that market at that time will bypass that market until we can identify the distributor that is that launch arm solution to us. One of the realities of different types of markets is that consumers respond in different ways. They have different tastes. There's different types of marketing that you have to use to get to them, to build brand awareness, to share that experience of the product. And of course, the story that you want to tell
00:22:43
Speaker
How do you approach marketing when it comes to a specific market like Ontario or Canada for that matter? Is the marketing mix the same or do you have research that shows you that if we do this type of marketing, other than that type of marketing, then we'll be more successful? Yes, Canada is probably, Ontario uncontrolled states are
00:23:09
Speaker
different in their approach to non-controlled states. You have one importer of the LCBO, their government owned, they are the largest single purchaser of alcohol in the world. They're the gatekeepers to this market and they do that very well. We have a good relationship with them. I believe they see the value in Donville's. It's a market that once you get into Ontario,
00:23:33
Speaker
Consolidation is the first thing. You want to make sure you're still in marketing next year. If you're not successful in the LCBO, you'll not be there alone and you have a hard job getting back in. So consolidation and then growth, interest. I guess I've been talking to Jeff about this yesterday and Jeff said that we have to change our marketing strategy in
00:23:53
Speaker
in Ontario. We have to be in Margaret Moore, we have to put the face of Dundas out there more in Margaret on the clear counts. I guess at the start we rely a lot on winning lots of awards and telling the story through that quality and that gets you so far. And then a lot of online marketing, a lot of POS.
00:24:15
Speaker
We're now at the point where we have a bit of brand recognition in Ontario. It's now about getting people on the ground. At some point in the development of a whisky in a market, there's nothing else. Just getting feet on the ground, getting your brand ambassadors out there and spending 68 weeks in market, covering all the key accounts, talking to the right people, building friendships with the main bars and the key accounts.
00:24:42
Speaker
The alcohol industry is still a lot like that. You're relying on a barman. If you work into a bar and ask for an Irish whiskey, or ask for a whiskey, he probably has 50 whishees behind the bar, and he can pour any of those 50 whishees. So we have to empower that barman. We have to empower that person in the off-life. We have to empower that person to offer a Donville's, to pour a Donville's, and to tell the consumer,
00:25:06
Speaker
why they're pouring the adults. If they don't have the knowledge of your brand, if they don't understand your distillery, if they don't know the story, they'll not be empowered to recommend your brand. So it's really important that you get to keep people in the industry, the bartenders, the bar owners, the guy behind the counter, the off-licence, to educate them on your story because they can recommend my product to you and justify why they're recommending it.
00:25:33
Speaker
And at some point you just have to get fit on the ground and do that also. The key message here, I mean, there's lots of messages that you've delivered and I think we've had a great conversation. The key message here, and this applies to B2B software companies as well, is that relationships matter.
00:25:50
Speaker
is that meeting people, building out your network, telling the story about your brand and your product are more important than ever because I think the digital marketing landscape is too noisy. It's too busy. It's increasingly difficult to break through. I think with AI and chat GPT, there's going to be more content than ever. So standing out from the crowd using digital marketing is going to be increasingly challenging. So the
00:26:16
Speaker
Effectiveness of meeting people and shaking hands and putting a face to a name is going to be really, really important. And pouring them to sell your product, there's a, they know and understand the brand story and know the quality of the liquid. Yeah, and I think those lessons apply to all types of different companies. A final question, and this may be unfair because you're not a marketer, but
00:26:42
Speaker
How do you tell if your marketing is working? Aside from bottled, being pulled off the shelves, or people's liquor cabinets, or at bars and restaurants, how do you quantify marketing success? Do you know what? For me, that's an easy one, because if you're not doing it right, your distributor isn't learn telling you you're not doing it right. You know, whenever you visit a brand, at some point,
00:27:09
Speaker
during your two to three or four day visit to Ontario, Jason is going to pull you to one side and say, look, here's what's working and here's what's not working. So if you can't recognize those traits yourself, and we do set targets for every skew.
00:27:26
Speaker
And we will monitor those, we will monitor sales and monitor feed-through and monitor post-through and monitor how many stores or how many bars we're in and why we're in the right bars and everything else. But we're not in market, we're not in Ontario and Jason is. And Jason, he's the guy that's out there, you know, every day. And if it's not working, Jason will know. If it's not working, Jason will, at some point during this weekend, he will pull me aside and tell me exactly what is and what is not working, you know. So you do rely very heavily on
00:27:55
Speaker
The very first thing I said to you was getting the right people, the right distributor in the right market. And that is so key to the success of your product for so many reasons. But also having the distributor that's honest with you, having the distributor that is not afraid to have those hard conversations because they benefit us both. We can have 27 different KPIs set up to monitor what we think is happening in that market.
00:28:19
Speaker
but interest the person in that market is going to tell you more than those 27 KPIs ever will. The KPIs are one thing interpreting the KPIs is something different entirely and somebody in market, somebody's got to go and interpret those better.
00:28:35
Speaker
Great points. Two points that I just want to wrap up. One is that if you're using distributors, having people who are advocates and know your product inside out and can give you the honest truth about how your marketing and sales are doing is really important.
Feedback and KPI Insights for Marketing Success
00:28:48
Speaker
And the other thing you mentioned, there's lots of KPIs and data is great, but you have to pull insight from the data to make it matter. A final, final question. If people are interested in learning more about the distillery, where do they go?
00:29:01
Speaker
Yes, well, I will go to the social medias. actionville.com is our website. And then you'll find Donville's RS Whiskery across the usual social media channels. But your first port of call will be actionville.com. That's E-C-H-L-I-N-V-I-L-N-E.
00:29:21
Speaker
Well, thanks, Charlotte, for the great conversation. It was a different type of conversation. I hope people got value from getting perspective about how a different type of product works. But I think there's some important marketing and sales lessons to be learned from the approach that you're taking towards influencer marketing, in-person marketing, and using distributors as a key to get into markets. I want to thank everybody for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark.
00:29:48
Speaker
If you enjoyed the conversation, rate it, and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. If you're a B2B SaaS company looking for more sales and leads, but struggling to do marketing that makes an impact, we should talk. I use a three-part methodology to diagnose, fix, and optimize your marketing strategically and tactically. Reach out to me via email, mark at markevans.ca, or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.