Lewis argued that a lack of investment in core brands including Crown Royal and Smirnoff in the US \u2013 while focusing more on tequila, for example \u2013 has hampered growth in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are very big, very important brands, which quite frankly, we\u2019ve not done a great job with. We need to go back and we need to do that. And we need to obviously recover the momentum in tequila. We\u2019re confident we know how to do that, but it won\u2019t be overnight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see some weaknesses in core brands for a number of years that\u2019s being covered up by the growth of tequila. And actually in the last year, we\u2019ve seen tequila\u00a0suffering quite considerably for a number of reasons, and \u2026 that\u2019s why we\u2019re losing share in North America.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Smirnoff, O\u2019Keeffe added: \u201cAs I have travelled around the US in the last two months, I have been struck by how poor we look on\u00a0shelf with Smirnoff. There are a number of packaging missteps that we have taken, which I am\u00a0currently undoing.\u201d<\/p>\n
These moves include rolling back the use of rPET \u2013 \u201cwhich is cloudy and opaque\u201d \u2013\u00a0and moving the Smirnoff mark into virgin plastic (alongside glass).\u00a0<\/p>\n