Caroline Begley Talks About Using AI To Connect The Virtual With Physical World [Audio]

[00:00:00] Dave Forde: Boys and girls, people of all ages, it's your boy, Dave Forde, The Connected One. As a marketer, your role is to find new and innovative ways to bring the message of your product or service to the masses. Today on the pod, we are joined by Carol Begley, who is the VP of Marketing for Corby Spirit and Wines.

Caroline, how you doing?

[00:00:26] Caroline Begley: I'm good. Thank you, Dave. How are you doing?

[00:00:29] Dave Forde: Life is beautiful. I feel like a drink, but what should I have today?

[00:00:35] Caroline Begley: Well, anyone who knows me knows my go-to cocktail. Any, any event as we start off is an Espresso Martini. So made with Absolute Kahlua, absolutely delicious. Perfect cocktail..

Go-to cocktail.

[00:00:47] Dave Forde: All right, today we're gonna talk about the latest absolute vodka campaign where you guys leveraged AI. But before we get to that, introduce yourself to the people. Tell us a bit of your background. How did you get to being [00:01:00] VP of Marketing for Corby Spirit and Wine?

[00:01:03] Caroline Begley: So I joined Corby in August, of 2020 as the VP Marketing, uh, Corby Spirit Wine is an affiliate of Pernod Ricard Group globally. I've actually been with Per Rico group for my full career. I came from university. To the group and have worked in various markets, around the world. Dublin, London, Stockholm, Shanghai, New York, and now Toronto.

So it's been, quite a journey. Um, and yeah, I was very excited to, to come to Toronto and, and set, set some roots here.

[00:01:39] Dave Forde: So it almost sounds like you have a degree in alcohol.

[00:01:44] Caroline Begley: Well, I dunno if I would say that, initially university was international business. And I suppose through the journey I've had through marketing, it's been, you know, a career in brand building and I'm very lucky to work on incredible brands, iconic [00:02:00] global brands that Pernod Ricard has in different capacities. And um, yeah, that's where I've kind of had my on-the-job. Education.

[00:02:08] Dave Forde: And what is ir about the spirit and alcohol industry that you love so much? Because again, as you've said, you've, this, your entire career has been in this industry.

[00:02:17] Caroline Begley: Yeah, I mean, I guess the you know, the, the brands that we work on in Pernod Ricard are incredible, whether it's Absolute, Jameson, the Glenlivet or Corby brands like JP Weiser. So as a marketer, it's really exciting to be able to work on all facets of the marketing mix, whether you are, you know, building positioning, driving equity, but equally focusing on, you know, excellence and execution.

How do we connect with consumers? How do we drive, drive sales in store. So it's exciting to be across the full mix. But obviously the alcohol industry, you know, it's, um, it's a convivial industry. It's about sociability. Um, and so what's really, you know, been appealing to me through the [00:03:00] years with Pernod Ricard is, you know, the people that we work with, we, we are creators of conviviality.

We have shared, shared values and it makes it a very enjoyable place to work.

[00:03:09] Dave Forde: So again, today you and I are gonna talk about the latest campaign for Absolute Vodka, which is Mix Your Neighborhood. But can you give us a little bit background in terms of what is the, what was the goal for this campaign?

What was the purpose for this campaign?

[00:03:21] Caroline Begley: Sure. So, the Global Campaign is Born to Mix and we've, executed that campaign in many different ways through our cocktail platform, through our, above the line comms. And we thought that there could be, a really interesting angle in how do we bring the global campaign to feel hyper local.

For Canadians. So really bringing it to the Canadian consumers, making it feel close to them. And working with Ogilvy Canada, we had a great idea of, you know, Being close to you. It's about your neighborhood, it's about where you're from, it's about your diverse communities and how you celebrate [00:04:00] that and mixing that with our cocktail platform.

Well, what would it be like if you could, Mix your neighborhood? So all of those unique attributes of where you live, where you're from, and mix it together to create. A visual cocktail of how that might look. So that was kind of the thought behind it, really bringing the global campaign to something very hyper local with Born to Mix and really demonstrating absolute credentials in, a brand of creative expression.

[00:04:30] Dave Forde: Now you've, over your career, you've, you've been involved in a lot of campaigns, but what is it about this one that made it different? What was it, what was exciting about this particular campaign for you?

[00:04:39] Caroline Begley: I mean beyond, you know, the, the inside of feeling very close to Canadian consumers, the use of technology.

So obviously, you know, AI it's a hot topic at the moment. You know, it's getting, it's advancing at a rapid rate, what you can do with it. And to be able to use an AI platform to take these attributes, [00:05:00] take the prompts that we put in, and then create an absolutely stunning visual as that representation.

Was very exciting to us. It was unlike anything we had ever seen before. And you know, it's kind of, it's going beyond like what, what you can imagine. Something like that could be. So to see that generated in these stunning visuals for us was something very exciting.

[00:05:24] Dave Forde: AI is still relatively new, you know, for a brand.

Is there, is there now danger to working with a new technology?

[00:05:31] Caroline Begley: For sure, you know, there's, there's things we don't know. It's evolving all the time. But I think we wanted to be responsible with how we're using it. You know, it's a very tight brief of what we're trying to create, and we're working with, you know, our partners Ogilvy to shape it in the right way.

And I think regardless of, you know anything that Absolute works on it's, we want to do it responsibly. So, you know, we've campaigns about in the [00:06:00] US of sex responsibly, engage responsibly. Um, you know, there would've been a, a thought with this AI campaign of let's create responsibly as well.

[00:06:10] Dave Forde: Now, the alcohol spirit category is a very, very competitive one.

How does it fit with Canadians, especially the absolute brand? You know, w w do you, do you know anything in terms of the market share that absolute has with around Canada? You know, how do Canadians feel about absolute.

[00:06:25] Caroline Begley: Sure. Absolute is an iconic brand globally and also here in Canada. Canada's the second biggest market for absolute in the world.

And vodka is the biggest category in Canada. So it's a big category. Absolute's a big brand, and it is very competitive. You know, it's a, it's a category that lends itself, very well to a lot of innovation. Flavors are, you know, a big driver of new news within the category. And it's also a category that lends itself quite well to brand extensions.

[00:07:00] So we're also doing a lot of work at the moment with absolute RTDs, canned cocktails for the summer months, and, and really sort of using, the, the stretch of the category to connect with consumers in different occasions.

[00:07:15] Dave Forde: Now you talked about this campaign, you know, being a national one and, and working with different neighborhoods.

How did you go about choosing the neighborhoods that, that the campaign worked in?

[00:07:23] Caroline Begley: So we, so far we've started with 20 different neighborhoods. And we plan to, we plan to add to that, we basically kind of, we wanted to make sure we were representing all across Canada. So we feature neighborhoods from different cities, from east to to west coast, with and making sure that we were choosing, you know, A broad spread of what those kind of neighborhoods would be.

We worked with bartenders from those neighborhoods to really give us kind of their, their feeling of what those neighborhoods represented. And I, so again, [00:08:00] to make it feel, you know, very close, but started with 20. But what's great about this campaign is that when you go on the website, https://www.absolut.com/en/ you can actually submit your neighborhood. So, where, where, where are you from, Dave? I'm an East Ender Scarborough. Okay. So you could submit your neighborhood in, in the website and that could be chosen as one of the next neighborhoods that we will generate an AI image for now.

[00:08:27] Dave Forde: Can I choose my house and get a personalized delivery?

[00:08:30] Caroline Begley: You know what? For you, we might be able to organize that.

[00:08:33] Dave Forde: Alright.

So obviously this is not just, you know, this is not one campaign. How does this fit into the overall brand and marketing for Absolute, you know, what's the rest of the year look like? How does this campaign fit for that?

[00:08:46] Caroline Begley: Yeah it's a busy time coming up for us. With our flavored launch.

We've just launched Absolute Vanilla, so, as I mentioned, my favorite cocktail, Espresso Martini. Perfect. With an Absolute Vanilla. We have a number of our RTD can cocktails [00:09:00] launching. We are an official partner, the official vodka partner of OSHEAGA Festival, which will be in Quebec in August.

And we're also an official partner of the Empires Ball, drag performance shows. So, and that's happening in July. So, We have quite a broad spread of activity going on over the next few months and a lot of things for consumers to look forward to.

[00:09:25] Dave Forde: Wow, sounds great. And of course, people can get Absolute at their local LCBO at any bar, restaurant that they dine at.

Exactly. Perfect. And what's that website again?

[00:09:37] Caroline Begley: It is https://www.absolut.com/en/.

[00:09:44] Dave Forde: Beautiful. I love it. And you know what, I think I'm gonna go out to a restaurant and get a drink right now. Caroline, appreciate your time.

[00:09:50] Caroline Begley: Thank you so much. Thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[00:09:53] Dave Forde: We'll talk to you soon.

[00:09:53] Caroline Begley: All right, take care.

Bye.[00:10:00]