Pros
Great industry to work in. That said, conviviality is true about all companies in this industry and not exclusive to Pernod Ricard. Great perks: allowance to buy the products, good benefits, competitive salary, good T&E policy. Company is financially well managed and should always be profitable, despite NOT gaining market share versus competitors. Only real successfull brand has been Jameson. Absolut Vodka has been a catastrophy. And despite spending like a drunk sailor behind Elyx and their internal communication spin, they have absolutely no traction in the luxury vodka. I would love to see the Ely P&L...
Cons
It used to be a paternalistic company with strong values but it is fast changing. Patrick Ricard would have never conducted the recent reorganizations just to address the comments of some Wall Street analysts who compared the fixed costs of Pernod to Diageo’s. They’ve let go so many great people and talent go, just because this was the advice of their management consultants. The company is losing touch with its culture. There is definitely a glass ceiling if you are not French and don’t belong to the boy’s club. In the US, almost all of the senior management is European in key functions like Marketing and HR. The fact that they can only trust expats is a real shame in itself. The culture of the company is very internally focused – They spend so much resources just for internal convincing. Most of their senior leaders would not even have the skills set to be hired as a brand manager at their competitors. Very weak marketing and innovation culture. Again, they are good at buying brands not building brands. The only historical brands they have built themselves are now constantly declining (Ricard, Suze, etc). Result, Pernod Ricard USA is constantly losing market share. ’m not even talking about the Absolut fiasco and what they have done with this brand that they overly paid for a month before the 2008 crisis. They react and they follow, instead of innovating. Some examples of this: - Launching an ultra premium Absolut vodka (Absolut Elyx) years after that market had grown - Launching Avion tequila after Patron has developed the market. - In Cognac and Champagne, they truly have an inferiority complex to LVMH and it does not seem to go away. Their internal global innovation hub called BIG is a real joke. Nothing has come out of there except some BS press releases and expensive buzz videos. The emperor has no clothes!
