Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
Hennessy Cognac, Bernard Peillon
The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hennessy Cognac, Bernard Peillon, tells ADEMOLA OLONILUA about his perception of Nigeria and his company’s brand
Is this your first visit to Nigeria?
Yes it is. But I have been to South
Africa. My parents used to live in Northern Africa, in Morocco and
actually my brother was born there. I have been to a few other
countries, but I’m still in the learning stage.
What’s your first impression of Nigeria?
I think two things; the first one is the
energy of the people. There is a tremendous amount of energy. I’ve been
travelling for 30 years, I think a bit everywhere on the globe and when
you come to a country like Nigeria, you can sense that energy. You see
the people and the way they move, you love the energy.
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second is the population; Lagos has about 20 to 25 million people, even
more. This is gigantic even as you go across the globe. Very few cities
are 20-25 million-strong. It’s big!
What would you attribute to the level of success of Hennessy in Nigeria?
Most people will define success around
the current situation and give the impression that it is overnight.
Actually, success for brands like ours is not overnight. We’ve been in
Africa for over 150 years. The first shipment was in 1866. So the last
20 to 25 years, I’ve seen an acceleration of our business expansion,
particularly here in Nigeria, which makes Nigeria one of our top 10
markets in the world. Hennessy is present in about 120 countries and
Nigeria is in our top 10 markets in the world.
The success is always for brands that I
can see coming from a long way with relationships in the market
nurturing personal relationships with opinion leaders, with business
leaders, with consumers. In doing that, we’ve partnered with local
partners who will help us understand the market. There is no way that me
or a team of French people coming into Nigeria can understand it with
the same intimacy as if you have a local partner and that allows us to
decipher and understand the specifics of a market like Nigeria.
With our focus in mind, we don’t come to
any country, including Nigeria with our toolbox and say, “This is the
way it should be done”. The Hennessy family has never done it like that.
They’ve been going around the globe. The first shipment of Hennessy in
the United States was in 1794. We were founded in 1765, 1859 in China,
1880 in Russia. But every single time, we’ve always partnered and
listened. We check on the pulse of the market and we became intimate
with the market and I think that’s the basic element that has made
Hennessy successful.
And then, obviously, we’ve invested in
the market; we’ve explained to the people what makes Hennessy special or
good. We make sure that the quality is there and protected but that
comes after understanding the market.
Why is the 250th anniversary so important to the brand Hennessy?
It is because we only celebrate those
milestones every 50 years; so we are always looking in that time span.
The last time we celebrated was 50 years ago for the 200th anniversary.
When you have a milestone like this one, you have a fantastic
opportunity to reflect on the past and to project yourself and say, “How
do I define myself moving forward?”.
If you look at our motto for the 250th
anniversary, it is ‘crafting the future since 1765’. It means that we’ve
created with the men and women the success at Hennessy today and
because of that relationship that I just described about Nigeria, we are
projecting ourselves into the future. That’s what we are celebrating.
So as we go round the planet and we take the opportunity of the 250th
anniversary, we are celebrating the men and women who’ve created what
Hennessy is today and that is the most important part.
250 years after the first bottle was produced, how do you stay in line with the Hennessy vision?
The story of the 250 years is the story
of two families – the Hennessy’s as the visionaries, the founders and
the owners of the house. We don’t like to use the word ‘company’; we
rather say ‘house’. Internally, we say the ‘house of Hennessy’ because a
house is inhabited; it has a human dimension rather than ‘company’,
which sounds very corporate.
So, we have the Hennessy family and then
they’ve associated themselves with the Filloux family, the master
blenders. We have two families that for seven generations have created
from generations to generations the Hennessy Cognac, which has expanded
across the globe. So the absolute obsession is the quality. I spend
probably more time discussing about quality with our suppliers. There
has been a family supplying Hennessy continuously for 219 years. So the
first element is the insurance that we retain the quality of our supply.
The second element, which is more of a
business element, is the agility. Even though I am in charge of quite a
huge amount of people, I do a lot of travelling and this is because we
need to listen to the way that the world is ticking. For example, people
are saying, “China is great – there’s a great opportunity there, we
need to adapt to the flow of the economic environment”.
Hennessy is the only brand that has a
true international presence and the success in Nigeria has not come
overnight, it’s been in the works for at least the past 25 years. It’s
how you project yourself; “What is the future of Nigeria to Hennessy?”
That’s my key question and when I spend time here, it’s to understand
this by talking to people like you, to our partners, to artists, to a
young man working with Hennessy. “How do you as a young Nigerian look at
the future?” So I can come back to Hennessy in Cognac and have that in
mind and decide, “How do I move the brand? How much resources to I
locate to Nigeria to secure that future?” So that’s the agility and the
know-how that I need to develop and like the Hennessy’s have done, so
that I’m the best international manager there is for a brand like
Hennessy.
What are the current challenges facing Hennessy globally?
We are leaving in interesting times. The
world is incredible because there is very little you can predict;
that’s why you need to have this widespread presence that allows you to
face a world that is unpredictable. I think my predecessors were living
in a world that was a bit more stable. This world is clearly unstable
and who would have predicted that the price of the oil barrel would be
close to $40?
There were people talking about the oil
price going to $200. This is impacting a lot of countries including
Nigeria and Russia. So, it’s how these countries adapt to that. Then
China’s new president who has decided to fight against corruption when
he resumed power in 2012. This has significantly changed the
environment, and at the same time at the US which has a very low
employment rate, of say 5.3 per cent, and core consumers which are
African-Americans are better off in this current cycle than during the
depression of 2008/2009. Hennessy has a booming business in the US. So
on one hand, we have some countries that are going through a hiccup and
it’s about moving around.
And then you have the currencies; China
just devaluated the Renminbi, this has an impact. The euro is weakening
against the dollar; this has a positive impact on us. You need to be
extremely agile, but at the same time keep the long-term perspective.
You cannot just move a brand like Hennessy one minute to the right, the
other minute to the left. You need to be consistent. Again, I think we
are successful because we are consistent. We take a reading on the
world; we try to be agile but at the same time, we stick to a vision.
That’s the key idea.
Other than consistency, what gives your brand an edge over competitors?
I have to say first of all, quality. How
can I say this? We have the largest and most beautiful qualitative
inventory of eau de vie on the planet. We have the most qualitative
stock of great cognacs. The second I’ll have to say is our passion.
What’s the day in the life of the CEO?
I have close to a thousand employees at
Hennessy – how do you turn them into a formidable force because
everybody is pulling in the same direction. I don’t have to be behind
anyone; I just know that the job is being done because people are
committed; they are passionate and they believe in something and when
they get up in the morning, they know what they want to do and they
believe in it and it’s as simple as that.
After that, you put processes, you put
whatever you want. I think I have the best team in the world – my talent
is to hire the best people on the planet that will be totally
motivated, dedicated to Hennessy. I am just the conductor in an
orchestra; my team plays.
In the past eight years, what has been your most challenging day?
It never boils down to one thing or day –
it’s an ongoing thing. If I’m in the shower or taking my marathon runs,
my mind is on the business. I need to keep it under control so it’s
cool and serene and very calm. You need to be very calm; so you face one
problem at a time and you try to keep the vision so that you don’t kind
of deviate from it.
