PERNOD RICARD CMO, Pam Forbus on the Benefits of Being a Market Maker vs. a Marketer

Pam Forbus is the Chief Marketing Officer of Pernod Ricard North America, a role she has held since July 2020. In her role, she oversees the marketing strategy for Absolut, Jameson, Malibu, Avion, and multiple other spirits, wines, and champagnes. Before joining Pernod Ricard, Pam worked for Walt Disney Studios, where she led the insights, analytics, and CRM functions. Prior to Disney, Pam spent nearly two decades at PepsiCo, where she pioneered – and rolled out globally – a new demand-science approach to insights.  

In this conversation with Lippe Taylor CEO Paul Dyer, Pam discusses the role of data in making creative decisions, her leadership path to becoming CMO, and her team’s recent journey into the metaverse with Absolut Vodka.

Here are some key takeaways from the conversation with Pam:

Be a market maker, not a marketer.

When asked what skills aspiring marketing leaders should acquire, Pam cited that a core understanding of what drives the business and a cross-functional awareness of how to work with sales and finance departments to determine what really sells products is everything. Pam cautioned that marketers should not focus on vanity metrics, like likes, shares, and impressions, but instead focus on understanding the drivers of bottom-line sales. She also furthered this with the following distinction: "If we're doing it right, if we're driving the business, and we're driving strong brand value equity, we are market makers, not marketers."

Don't just jump on protests bandwagons, be part of the solution.

When the Facebook boycott occurred, Pam and her organization joined it but wondered what else they could do to affect real change in meaningful ways. As a result, she and her team created the Engage Responsibly initiative with the ANA to combat hate speech online. Since launching, more than ninety leading marketers, agencies, media companies, social media platforms, trade groups, and NGOs have pledged to take definitive action to combat online hate speech.

Always remain data-led.

A common query among marketing leaders is 'how do I become data-driven while remaining creatively intuitive?' As much as she values creativity, Pam cautions against being swept up in it. Pam forces herself to be objective against the work she and her team are executing, regardless of how emotionally tied to it they become. "Make your decisions based on data because that is the consumer response and consumer reaction... If it's not testing well and it's not delivering. We've got to go back to the drawing board and fix it."

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Produced by Simpler Media