INTERVIEW: Sheer verve

Veuve Clicquot’s Cécile Bonnefond is so committed to her work and her brand she believes she may have ‘yellow blood’. Charlotte Hey is duly impressed by her vigour and enthusiasm

Think Veuve Clicquot and, if you’re in the UK, you probably think of “The Season”. In the States it’s style, a little bit Sex and the City. In Japan, perhaps, women at the cutting edge of culture. For me it’s about the brand’s CEO, Cécile Bonnefond and the fact that when I grow up I would quite like to be like her… but then I realise that I am probably quite grown up now in most people’s books so there’s really no hope. I suppose what it is is that she has, in the true French sense of the phrase, that certain je ne sais quoi – something that, she confesses, she is constantly battling to imbue into her brand.

“I consider myself very lucky to be running Veuve Clicquot,” Bonnefond admits. “I never feel constrained by the brand and my job constantly drives me to be true to the brand and what it represents.

“The other thing it does is bring me closer to the consumer. Often in my role you can get very easily distanced. What I love is that the consumer is constantly challenging and inspiring – that’s what makes me get up in the morning.”

Under Bonnefond’s guidance,  Veuve rose to be the number one Champagne brand in the US, before she was invited to move back to France to run the whole show. You can tell from the way she speaks about the brand she is not only passionate, but very determined about how she wants Veuve Clicquot to be perceived and where she wants it to be in the international arena. 2007, according to the LVMH company report, was another good year with considerable growth in the US, UK, Italy and Japan and there is no sign so far in 2008 of growth abating, but for Bonnefond one of the main challenges “is that everything moves so slowly in Champagne”. She explains, “I have to think and act now on what I think is going to be happening in 2012-2015. It’s not easy and, to be honest, if it was

not challenging then Champagne would not be a luxury product. The thing is, whatever the hunch, whatever your intuition, when you are working with such long lead times it has to be right and you have to be able to know which way the market, the trends, are going.”

Experiential approach
For Bonnefond, the term luxury is overused and at the risk of sounding a bit over the top she believes that in Champagne “our job is to give ‘in-speriences’”. Doesn’t that sound a bit like marketing guff? “No,” she insists, “what I am talking about is experiences inside, for the true self, an experience for the whole person. That’s the essence of Champagne even though the term is not used widely in the wine industry, other businesses are driven by it; driven to bringing that extra je ne sais quoi to the consumer, a sense of the traditional, the shocking, the excellent, the innovative, while giving substance and inspiring humour sometimes as well. Champagne is there for experiences – it is so much more than just a wine – it is there to make you feel special.”

This is a theory that the trade no doubt has heard and read about many times over the years, but there is truth in it – Champagne is different to any other vinous category in terms of successfully marketing its brands and the sense of occasion a bottle of Champagne brings. But in that environment how do you make your brand stand out?

“When it comes to Champagne it’s all about style,” explains Bonnefond, “each brand has to have its own style and push that as far as you possibly can. I am not talking about style over substance – of course the excellence of the wine in the bottle is what comes first – but about marketing the intrinsic style of the brand.

“It’s about finding the balance between being true to your history – having a sense of heritage – but at the same time making the brand inspirational in a way that connects with the consumer.

“The Yellowboam was a prime example; we have had our distinctive colour for the past 130 years but what we wanted to do was make a new statement, say something different. The large format obviously makes a statement about quality but we gave it a touch of glamour – the ultimate statement in confidence, heritage and undebatable brand assets. Porsche designed a fridge for the living room, why not put our own twist on the larger format. The signature of a brand is that it makes you feel special.”

Following on in the same vein Clicquot has gone that one step further with its recent launch of the Veuve Clicquot-Riva collection, a sumptuous set of accessories for La Grande Dame which would make any aspiring jetsetter salivate at the prospect of using an ice bucket or “cruiser bag”, especially if used while speeding across the bay of Monte Carlo in one of Riva’s runabouts. I digress.

Cécile Bonnefond is particularly proud of the success the brand has had in the UK. Renowned for her ability at adding value to the
brand in the US she has charged her team with a similar challenge in the UK.

“Traditionally, the UK is one of our most important markets and will continue to be very important to us. We have grown market share over the past six or seven years and made the product much more relevant to the UK consumer, moving away from a more traditional image for the brand towards being a more up-scale Champagne brand.

“Our challenge was to do that without losing any of the chic-ness and style associated with it. Giving it a more trendy, innovative feel that would really help to establish its international feel. The result has been that we have doubled market share for Veuve Clicquot, which is invaluable.”

Bonnefond believes that it is essential to be in the UK if you want to access global markets. “You have to be in London. It is now an international platform when it comes to talking to the Russians, Indians, people from the Middle East – you just have to be in London. You only have to talk to the guys running the hotels; they are fully aware of the changing demographic of their key customers – London is now global. You can see how much it has changed here in the past 20 years – then you were very aware that the English wanted to be an island – now you are the centre of a broader global culture, there’s a vibrancy, it’s where so much is going on,” she enthuses.

Exciting times
Perhaps it is the enthusiasm that she has for the brand that is so admirable. You could be mistaken for thinking that her drive and energy for the brand is all a little too polished, but when she says, “I live and breathe the brand. I think sometimes I might have yellow blood”, you can’t help but believe her. I wonder whether being so energetic, having to constantly come up with new and aspirational ideas, is tiring?

“Exciting,” she states, firmly. “Wine is part of the entertainment business, consumers associate the product with memories every day and you have to ensure that you are part of those memorable experiences. Veuve Clicquot allows the consumer to express many different facets of their personality.” An approach you would not perhaps expect from a brand belonging to a multinational company like LVMH – but Bonnefond puts me right.

“The group has real respect for the personality of the brand. Within our organisation, therefore, it is very important for each of us
to maximise the differences between each of the brands within the portfolio and go as far as we can in terms of reinforcing brand personality.”

Which I suppose suits her own personality well: challenging and, in her own words, passionate.

“My passion for the job is about having and making an impact and I am lucky enough to be working with Champagne, which is one of the few industries where you can do that – it is such a versatile product. If you don’t have passion you can’t do the job.”

db © August 2008