“We are not a bank,” SABMiller’s global marketing manager on brand and music partnerships
SABMiller's global marketing manager Natalie Wills has said the beverage company is "not a bank" when it comes to negotiating music partnerships, with musicians often asking the company for large amounts of money due to its size.
Speaking at a Mixcloud event in London, Wills said SABMiller, which owns beer brands Grolsch and Peroni, consequently chooses to team up with artists for events in local markets.
“Because we are SABMiller global, a million-pound company, we get asked for huge amounts and I think if we were to do an event in Paraguay, for example, it would probably cost us a 24th of the amount it would cost us to do a global licensing deal,” she said.
“The main thing we need to do as a global industry, is help a lot of musicians get into countries that they are often not exposed to. So in countries like Latin American or China, where everybody is trying to crack and break in to and it’s quite difficult.”
Wills added that China and Latin America are “carrots that we dangle” in order to get reduced costs.
Speaking about whether SABMiller feels as though it regains the investment it puts into music, Wills said the company has had to restructure its strategy when it comes to partnering with or sponsoring music events so that it can measure performance more effectively.
“For us there’s a very big difference between a sponsorship and a partnership. With sponsorship you get beer pouring rights and you can clearly link that to sales, so that’s an easy investment measurement for us to link to.
"But with a partnership, if it’s run globally when there’s no real event, it’s very difficult to measure that in terms of brand equity and whether people like your brand and will buy your brand in store,” Wills revealed.
“I think the best way to go about it, and that’s why we’ve re-jigged our whole strategy, is basically - ‘yes you can have a global partnership’ but it needs to have some kind of beer selling opportunity within that. Obviously it’s very difficult to measure brand equity globally and we are trying now to do events in certain local markets so we can link that to sales.”
Wills added that ultimately SABMiller is a brand, and is not there to only break new artists, adding: “we’re here to sell beer and we need to have an opportunity to show that”.