Move over vodka
Report | Boyd Farrow Peroni’s latest target is Russia’s young stylish drinkers, so what better choice for making the Italian beer brand sexier than Antonio Berardi. The top fashion designer and Peroni’s Chris Taylor explain why the collaboration makes sense ANOTHER NIGHT IN aggressively cosmopolitan Moscow and another product launch. Unsurprisingly, in a city where [...]
Report | Boyd Farrow
Peroni’s latest target is Russia’s young stylish drinkers, so what better choice for making
the Italian beer brand sexier than Antonio Berardi. The top fashion designer and Peroni’s
Chris Taylor explain why the collaboration makes sense
alt="Peroni’s model Nena Ristic">
ANOTHER NIGHT IN aggressively
cosmopolitan Moscow and another product
launch. Unsurprisingly, in a city where the
Vogue Café is a bigger draw than many art
galleries, people are more than happy to kiss
air for the paparazzi. But tonight, the invited
guests at the Arsenal Gallery are merely the
props. The star of the evening is actually what most of them are
holding in their hands – bottles of Peroni Nastro Azzurro beer.
Foreign brands are still piling into free-spending Russia,
where disposable incomes grew 10.4% in 2007. And no-one
is more ambitious than global brewing giants, intoxicated by
the West’s growing influence on the country’s once vodkafavouring
consumers. Despite its modest 19% share of the
country’s alcohol consumption, Russia’s beer market is one
of the world’s fastest growing. Sales nudged $3.4bn in 2007,
placing Russia’s beer market behind only the US and China.
Moreover, Western brands, which sell at premium prices,
constitute the most rapidly growing segment of the sector.
While they represent just 10% of sales volume, they actually
account for 17% of its revenues.
Unsurprisingly, Peroni’s parent company, SABMiller – the
world’s largest brewer – is eyeing Russia with near-Napoleonic
lust. This year, the conglomerate will spend $50m (£25m)
to get its Italian label drunk by the right people inside the
right bars. Considering that the target demographic – 25-35
year-old Russians are already crazy for Italian fashion, food,
motorcars and ski resorts – this seems like a no-brainer.
The big challenges, notes Peroni’s marketing chief Chris
Taylor, are to push the product’s “heritage, craftsmanship
and authenticity” without overplaying the “fashion” angle
– young Russians apparently, have imported another
attitude from the West: fickleness.
alt="Peroni’s model Nena Ristic poses at the recent Peroni Nastro Azzurro launch in Moscow">
The campaign to crack the country however, dovetails
with Peroni’s highly successful strategy of aligning the brand
with aspirational Italians, whether they be chefs or fashion
designers – via product placements, endorsements and other
collaborations – and with media events deemed trendsetting.
Peroni has sponsored London Fashion Week and ensures that
its booze flows freely at “the most stylish events in the social
calendar”. Elsewhere, the “Italian style” brand association has
been orchestrated most cleverly in an ad campaign which
updated the iconic image of actress Anita Ekberg cavorting in
Rome’s Trevi fountain in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.
Peroni’s latest collaborator is the British (though of
Italian descent) fashion designer Antonio Berardi, who is a
big favourite in Moscow. Most famous for his voluminous
‘parachute’ dresses and shoes with five-inch heels, Berardi
teamed up with appliance maker Whirlpool in 2006 for an
entire catwalk-launched clothing line as well as the “prêt-àporter
clothes refresher”, a steaming device which resembles a
leather suit carrier fused with a golf-bag.
For Peroni, Berardi is developing a wide range of goods,
including high-end leather luggage, which will be made in Italy.
Speaking as the Peroni launch party at the Arsenal Gallery
wound down, Berardi declared that fashion designers now
have to be as much about commercial nous as creative flair.
“You definitely have to be an entrepreneur. People are much
more aware of fashion designers, as they are about every
other sort of designers. There is much more movement and
more types of collaboration in all sorts of businesses.”
alt="Peroni marketing chief Chris Taylor and fashion designer Antonio Berardi">
He added: “I was approached by Peroni out of the blue – just
as I was by Whirlpool – and they wanted a design collaboration.
There was no attempt to coax me in any particular direction,
so I didn’t even have to think about whether I should say yes. It
was just a fabulous opportunity to work with an Italian heritage
brand. By doing this I get an incredible amount of freedom.
There is less freedom in designing clothes nowadays. Customers
and the press have certain expectations and demands.
“Now I have a design business, I have to consolidate
my time on specific projects and it can be quite rigid. The
consultancy with Peroni is purely about design. Being asked to
come up with your own baby was an exciting proposition but
doubly so because I feel I can bring something to the party.”
Berardi says the collaboration will instil in him a different
kind of discipline. “On a simple level, what I’ll do for Peroni
will have a sexiness rather than romance, which is something I
have been doing with the clothes.”
He hopes the arrangement could lead him in other directions
too. These could involve a line of glassware or even bar design
– two growing areas. “I think that just about everything is to
play for,” he twinkles. Which could be an alternative slogan for
launching just about anything in today’s Russia.
Read more about Russia’s growing love affair with Italian and
other Western brands overleaf.
From Lada to moda
Italian brands are tops when it comes to
the increasingly lucrative Russian market
alt="Starbucks, which is looking to increase its foothold in Moscow">
THESE DAYS, THE most visible Russian ‘brand’ in
the TSUM department store, near the Kremlin, is
Natalia Vodianova, the Gorky-born supermodel, and
face of Calvin Klein and L’Oréal amongst others.
Muscovites’ love of spending money is only outpaced by their
infatuation with Western brands. Russian investment bank
Renaissance Capital predicts that the retail, consumer goods,
finance and construction sectors will enjoy 40% average
sales growth over the next decade, and a recent report by the
market research firm Nielsen forecasted that, by 2025, Russia
would become the largest consumer market in Europe.
A whole chunk of this is heading into Europe’s – and
particularly Italy’s – coffers. TSUM, owned by Mercury Group,
distributor of dozens of luxury fashion brands, is believed to
have hit turnover of €1bn in 2007, largely on the back of the
“Made In Italy” label. Indeed, Armani, Prada, Ferragamo and
Versace’s profits outside Asia are shored up by oligarchs and
their wives. Bain & Co predicts that the €2.5bn Russian luxury
market is expanding 20% annually on the back of oil prices.
Part of the reason, explains Aliona Doletskaya, editor-inchief
of Russian Vogue, is that long-marginalised Russians
have a voracious appetite to keep up with what is fashionable
outside Russia. This is echoed by Donatella Versace, who has
just refurbished her flagship Moscow shop – her company’s
most profitable one: “Russians have undergone a very rapid
development in their personal style. They want to live up to
their rich heritage now that they can afford it.”
Of course it is not only Italian style the Russians are keen
to emulate. Omega might have just announced a new watch
for the upcoming James Bond film, but – ironically – those
living near the KGB headquarters will be able to buy it first.
Omega already has a stand-alone store in Moscow and this
summer it will open a second one in St Petersburg. Another
luxury watch house Breguet is planning an outlet later this
year. The company announced last month that its sales in
Russia amount to a three-digit Swiss franc million figure,
and that sales in that market may at some stage surpass
those in the US. Meanwhile Mercedes, BMW and Lexus will
add showrooms in Russia this year, with Audi promised to
double the number of its stores by 2010. Sweden’s Ikea and
France’s Carrefour Group both plan
massive expansions into Russia this year, while US giant Wal-Mart and the UK’s Tesco
are plotting their own entrances.
alt="Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova">
But Italian style is what the Russians are really spending big
on – even if it is Italian style appropriated by others. Moscow
is currently in the grip of a coffee war, with US giant Starbucks
slugging it out with British company Whitbread’s Costa chain
in the once latte-deprived market. Western companies are
opening in new locations, competing for the attention of
Russian coffee drinkers. Both chains, plus dozens of others,
plan hundreds more outlets in the next two years, figuring
that Moscow’s ratio of one coffeehouse for every 3,187
people is an opportunity for growth.
But it is not just coffee chains that are responsible for
digging up Moscow’s streets. The area around TSUM –
whose multibillion rouble makeover was overseen by Italian
retail mastermind Vittorio Radice – is being plundered by
international hotel chains. With the number of travellers to
Moscow projected to increase fivefold, up to five million, within
the next two years, the city is undergoing a massive hotelbuilding
wave, matched only by activity in other Russian cities.
The giant international chain Rezidor Hotel Group alone plans
to open 50 hotels in Russia within four years. The company,
behind the Park Inn Hotels, Radisson and Regent brands is also
developing designer hotels in Moscow and St Petersburg in
association with the Italian fashion group Missoni.
