Global Courant
Ivan Menezes, who as chief executive of the spirits company Diageo used his savvy understanding of the drinking public to help the company grow into a global behemoth, died in London on June 7. He was 63.
The cause was complications from emergency surgery for an ulcer, a Diageo spokesman said.
Diageo is ubiquitous in the alcohol world, selling more than 200 brands in more than 180 countries, including Smirnoff vodka, Tanqueray gin, Johnnie Walker Scotch, Captain Morgan rum and Guinness beer. In some spirits, it has the largest global net sales.
Mr. Menezes (pronounced muh-NAY-zess) is trained in marketing and has studied consumer sentiment closely. For him, spirits provided what he called “accessible luxury” for customers – a dram of the good life, even in an unstable economy.
“The example I like to use is if you’re an average New Yorker, it might be hard to spend a night at the Four Seasons,” Mr. Menezes said of that exclusive restaurant in an interview with The New York Times in 2005: “but you could walk into the Four Seasons bar and enjoy a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue Label on the rocks.”
Mr. Menezes, who became CEO in 2013, has been with Diageo from the start. He was Guinness’ strategy director in 1997 when the company merged with Grand Metropolitan PLC, which owned Burger King and Pillsbury, creating a conglomerate reportedly worth $33 billion.
After the merger, he became Global Marketing Director for the company’s beverage division in 1998.
One of his first challenges was to make Johnnie Walker attractive to a new generation. It wasn’t so much that young drinkers disliked the taste of blended Scotch, but rather that the drink’s traditional tartan image felt gross, Diageo’s market research found.
“We are losing older drinkers with buckets full, but we are only gaining new ones with thimbles,” said Mr Menezes in 1999 in the Scottish newspaper The Scotsman. “We will all benefit if everyone focuses on building brands and making their brands relevant to younger consumers.”
That year, Mr. Menezes spent £100 million (about $224 million in today’s dollars) to revive Johnnie Walker’s image with an international advertising campaign developed by the agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
The campaign introduced the slogan “Keep walking” and featured three television commercials, including one starring the actor Harvey Keitel walked into a colosseum full of lions while talking about overcoming stage fright; another showed French funambulist Ramon Kelvink tightrope walking between buildings.
“With this campaign, we hope to build an emotional connection with consumers through the universal territory of inspiring personal progress,” Mr. Menezes told Campaign magazine.
A quarter of a century later, Johnnie Walker, one of the most popular Scotch brands in the world, still uses the slogan ‘Keep walking’. Diageo said Johnnie Walker’s sales value had increased from about $5.1 billion in 2012 to more than $8 billion by 2022.
Under Mr. Menezes, Diageo expanded its tequila offerings, trading the Irish whiskey brand Bushmills to Casa Cuervo in 2014 in exchange for full control of the Don Julio tequila brand and $408 million in cash. The company also bought Casamigos, the tequila brand created by George Clooney and two friends, Rande Gerber and Michael Meldman, in a 2017 deal worth up to $1 billion. Tequila is now the company’s second largest seller after Scotch.
As chief executive, Mr. Menezes removed a layer of regional management, facilitating communication between the global company and national companies and reducing the workforce from about 36,000 to nearly 28,000. He was credited with reducing Diageo’s carbon emissions and pushing for greater diversity in the workforce by adding more women at the top level. He planned to retire this year; the new CEO is Debra Crew.
She’s taking over as the company faces a recent lawsuit brought by Sean Combs, the rapper known as Diddy, who has accused the company of racial bias for neglecting the vodka and tequila brands they sell. be a co-owner. Diageo denied Mr Combs’ allegations, saying in a statement that “we are confident that the facts will show that he was treated fairly.”
Ivan Manuel Menezes was born on July 10, 1959 in Pune, India to Nina and Manuel Menezes. His mother taught music and French; his father was the chairman of the Indian Railway Board.
After graduating from St. Mary’s High School in Mount Abu, India, Mr. Menezes in 1979 a bachelor’s degree in economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
He then studied business management and marketing at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and took a job at Nestlé in New Delhi in 1981.
He moved to the United States to study business administration at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, completing his master’s degree in 1985. He then took a job as a business and management consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, based in Chicago and London.
Mr. Menezes served as vice president of group marketing for Whirlpool in Northern Italy from 1992 until he left for Guinness in 1997.
He held several other positions at Diageo, including chief operating officer and president of the company’s North American operations, before succeeding Paul S. Walsh as chief executive.
He is survived by his wife, Shibani, with whom he lived in London; two brothers, Victor, the former chairman and chief executive of Citibank, and Michael; a sister, Marisa; a daughter, Rohini Menezes; and a son, Nikhil.
Mr Menezes, who was a British and American citizen, as well as an overseas citizen of India, was knighted by King Charles III in January for services to business and equality.
When it came to his own taste in drinks, Mr. Menezes preferred classics like a Johnnie Walker Black and soda, or a pint of Guinness, although, as he said during an appearance on CNBC on St. Patrick’s Day in 2007, sometimes a not enough.
“What I’ll say about Guinness,” he said, “my favorite pint is always my next pint.”
