Bar Convent Berlin 2023 - Bonus Video Episode | Demystifying Gen-Z, how to build a brand that talks to all generations

Show Notes

Happy 2026. This Episode is hosted by Chris Maffeo and brought to you by MAFFEO DRINKS. A Deep-Dive Analysis of This Episode is Available at maffeodrinks.com

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This bonus episode was recorded at Bar Convent Berlin 2023, where Chris Maffeo held a presentation as a guest of Park Street University.

Interested in having the slides? Download them here: https://chrismaffeo.gumroad.com/l/demystifyinggenz?_gl=1*1dg8lxc*_ga*NzY1NzcyNzM1LjE3MDAzMTE5Nzk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*MTcwMDUxMzAyMC41LjAuMTcwMDUxMzAyMC4wLjAuMA..

About the Host: ⁠Chris Maffeo⁠

About the venue: ⁠BCB - Bar Convent Berlin⁠

All rights reserved: ⁠Park Street⁠

This episode is brought to you by MAFFEO DRINKS, an Advisory helping drinks leaders execute bottom-up growth while managing stakeholder expectations.

Celebrate with us our 3rd anniversary with a special 30% off forever at maffeodrinks.com/anniversary  

Creators and Guests

Host

Chris Maffeo

Building Bottom-Up Strategies WITH Drinks Leaders Managing Top-Down Expectations | MAFFEO DRINKS Founder & Podcast Host

What is MAFFEO DRINKS: The Lab?

The MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast is a leading drinks business podcast delivering actionable insights for drinks leadership.

For founders, directors, distributor MDs, and hospitality leaders navigating the tension between bottom-up reality and top-down expectations.

20+ years building brands across 30+ markets. Each episode features drinks builders: founders, distributors, commercial directors, sharing how the drinks industry actually works. Not the conference version. Honest conversations.

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Chris Maffeo: 00:52

So this is me. My my experience and my background are in the beer business. As Ahmed said, I lived in seven countries. I worked in 30 markets because I was mainly working for export departments. So usually when brands are famous in the homeland but not so famous in other countries.

Chris Maffeo: 01:12

And I try to bring today a different angle to the discussion that we've been having until now. It's about the life journey of a brand. So how do we incorporate the generations as the brand grow? Because brands are starting today or they started ten years, twenty years ago and they go on and every time there is new generations coming in the game. So we like to think that there are overnight successes when we see a brand and then we see it everywhere all of a sudden and it's just because we were not paying attention, but actually took twenty years on average.

Chris Maffeo: 01:47

So, and in this twenty years, you know, I'm talking about brands like Aperol, about Jameson, about Hendrix Gin, all these brands that we see now everywhere in bars and restaurants and we think that they've always been there, they haven't. Like the Negroni is an example of that. Know, like everybody has Negroni week now, but I remember the days where I was one of the few people, I'm a Negroni drinker and I was one of the few people ordering and sometimes I had to explain to the bars how to do a Negroni and that was quite funny. So it's usually a generation during this twenty years. So twenty years when we look at the graph from Charlie, every generation is roughly twenty years.

Chris Maffeo: 02:30

And during this time, there's many players entering the game. There's new generation coming in and there's a lot of things that happened during this twenty years. So, you build the brands and you create it, you have some ideas, and then you start to see change happening. So, change, market conditions are changing, and then you start thinking like, let's blame someone because I don't wanna blame myself. So let's try to see what didn't work and probably these people, new people don't get it or the original consumer don't get it.

Chris Maffeo: 03:04

Let's change something. But what actually happens is that during this time there is people leaving the company if it's a founder led company. If it's a big brand, there's new people, brand managers are leaving, they are getting promoted, they are going from sales to marketing, marketing to commercial, MD, CEOs and so on. So some managers are leaving, some new managers are coming, and then of course there's some knowledge that gets lost about what was the brand about. So what was the brand essence, the brand core, however we wanna call it.

Chris Maffeo: 03:37

And new managers come in and they of course wanna leave a mark. So, the easier one is let's change packaging. Let's change communication. This doesn't work. That's why our sales are declining.

Chris Maffeo: 03:49

We need to change something. Let's change the communication, let's change what we're doing. And then there's new consumers and customers entering the LDA, so illegal drinking age. So let's call it 18 here. For The US it's 21 and any other countries have got different ones, but roughly let's call it 18.

Chris Maffeo: 04:06

So what happens is that usually who turns 18 are people that are working in the bar, so many of you probably are working in bars, bartenders, many are just consumers, so they are not trade people. And what happens during this journey, during these generations, you know, generation come in. So, I've put the year where a generation is turning 18. So, 1983 is when the Gen X turned 18, 99 for millennials, 2014 for Gen X. The the line that I've that I that I've created, of course, it's a it's a dummy line, but it's how you are changing what you're doing.

Chris Maffeo: 04:49

So when you are not consistent to the consistent to the brand essence of your brand, then you start to jump on trends. And then it could be digital, it could be different trends that are coming and going, And you go up and down on this and you are not consistent with your brand. And then what happens when this happens? So when you are inconsistent, you know you start chasing you know new generations instead of really stopping and analyzing, okay, what is it that doesn't work? Like is it something that we're doing?

Chris Maffeo: 05:21

There are also like cycles. I mean, there's the rum ears, then the agave ears, the gin ears and so on. Like sometimes you just have to wait the wave to pick up again, you know, instead of changing and trying to do a, you know, rum and tonic because gin and tonic is popular. So what happens is that when you're starting to change stuff, then you are losing the existing consumer. So I was a consumer of this brand that resonated with me massively.

Chris Maffeo: 05:52

And now all of a sudden I start to see old weird communication, weird serves. It doesn't talk to me anymore. So I stopped drinking and I'd look for another alternative. Or it start discounting and then I my buying power is higher and actually I want to premiumize and then I discard that brand. Or then the new consumer that I'm trying to approach, actually they don't understand what this brand is about because I remember my father was drinking this brand, but it was totally different.

Chris Maffeo: 06:20

Now what are they trying to do? You know, this sounds fake because this is not their brand core. So they also don't drink it. So you're trying to catch two fishes and now you actually end up with none. And then the issue is that you actually stopped talking about the core of the brands and this is what actually happened.

Chris Maffeo: 06:41

So what should happen instead is that you should keep the consistency very high and the line is not straight for a reason because of course, like with time, there are some ups and downs, some marginal changes, some evolution of the brand. Of course, you cannot keep the brand exactly the same as twenty years, forty years, sixty years ago. There will be some changes but it's important to try to keep it as relevant as possible for the original core of the brand. One of the most common mistakes that I've seen during my career is that when a brand does it well in the beginning, then at some point they start they stop focusing on the basics and they start to do like the fancy stuff. So these two lines are basically the light blue line is the basics.

Chris Maffeo: 07:38

So, ritual, the serve, the perfect serve like we saw it on Guinness and Charlie's presentation, all the things that need to be consistent and then you take for granted. But if you think about it, you take for granted, you take it for granted because you know it, because you've been there and somebody had taught you ten years ago or twenty years ago. And I always give this example, a ritual, a new bartender, I'm at my age, I've seen it already, but a new person that is 20 today may have never heard about this ritual of this like it could be a garnish, it could be a perfect serve, it could be a beer pour, it could be anything. And they've never heard about it. So because when you enter, imagine like we all enter here Barre Convent, you know, there are gates at the door, you know.

Chris Maffeo: 08:29

Every time, you know, you basically have to be on the gates and wait for the people coming in and you need to talk to those people, You need to bring them with you on the journey and it would not be for everyone because not everyone will resonate with your brand, but you have to pick the right one that are right for your occasion and for your targets. And the most common mistake is that they stop doing the light blue line and they go just on the high blue line and they just start to do crazy things and fancy things and then they forget about it and then they have to go back to the basics. So, I brought some examples of brands that according to me and to my studies are brands that actually do it right and have done it right and that's why we are famous, you know, they are famous for and we are, we know them for. I mean, Campari. Campari, I remember it for the last decades, you know, they've been talking about the Negroni, about the fact that there's no Negroni without Campari, that there's no Americano without Campari.

Chris Maffeo: 09:28

In those years when Negroni, I mean, very few people were drinking Negroni but they stick to it. They didn't jump on another trend or another cocktail just because nobody was drinking Negroni. And then they created the wave, look around at the Negroni Week for example. Aperol. Aperol is a typical example.

Chris Maffeo: 09:48

Everybody talks about Aperol but I'm Italian. Aperol, didn't grow up with Aperol. You know, like Aperol is a recent phenomenon of of the last twenty years, you know. And they don't stop talking about the serve, the three to one, you know, they keep on talking about it because that's important for the core of the brand. Then you do all the communication, the lifestyle, the Italian lifestyle and so on.

Chris Maffeo: 10:11

But actually, you know, you really, really reinforce that. Take Hendrix as an example, the cucumber with the serve on a gin and tonic. You don't stop talking about the cucumber. Even though everybody know it, don't take it for granted that everybody know because it's not true. Like the new people don't know it, People that were not drinking gin don't know it and you need to communicate it and then on top of that you can do crazy activation, a great activation like this one that we're seeing here at BarConvent.

Chris Maffeo: 10:39

And Guinness, Charlie had a great slide on that one. You know, it's the typical thing about adjusting the way you convey the message, but the basic of the message is the same, is the perfectly poured Guinness in an Irish pub or whatever that is, but it's perfectly poured as a Guinness, and then you build some communication that is resonating with generation Z. You know, they didn't jump on the IPA trends when IPA was hot and nobody was drinking stouts. You know, they stick to the stout because that's what they do. So what is the key take out here?

Chris Maffeo: 11:13

Like, the the four main messages that I would like to you to bring with you home is, you know, be consistent with your brand essence regardless. You know, adjust it very slightly, you know, with time, but keep it consistent with what you have been doing. Keep mastering the basics. Don't forget about the basics. Even if your brand is selling millions of cases, you know, stick to the basics because the basics are what made your brand famous in the first place.

Chris Maffeo: 11:42

Don't change your brand essence, know, like don't change the actual message, change the way you convey the message. You know, imagine if you are talking, if you're a history teacher, you know, you don't change history because there is a different audience. Of course, if I'm talking about the Egyptians to my daughter, I explain it in a funnier way, but actually they're talking about the Egyptians as a history subject, right? And then educate new generation about your brand essence. So stick to it, stay consistent, and then everybody that will come in to the generation, if you are consistent, regardless of the generation you're talking to, they will get the brand.

Chris Maffeo: 12:22

And I always bring the example of football. If you take a national team winning the World Cup, you know, these are the teams that are consistently investing on youth talents. Know, national teams, they cannot buy players. Know, about the nationality. So you cannot just like go on to another country and buy players.

Chris Maffeo: 12:43

You need to invest in the team, in academy of the team and then consistently you will get the results after twenty years if you start today. But if you started twenty years ago, you see the results today and then you win the World Cup. So, and the teams that can manage to do it constantly are the ones that consistently win the European League, the World Cup, and so on. So stick to the basic, be consistent, and this is what brands are supposed to be doing to accommodate new generations coming in the game. That's all for today.

Chris Maffeo: 13:23

You find my podcast, I have a podcast. You'll see it here as a logo, it's on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you feel free to follow me also on LinkedIn and Instagram. Thank you.