Bacardi CMO Ned Duggan on how Patrón turned a regulatory spat into a marketer’s dream

Simply ask Patrón tequila and its advertising primo, Bacardi’s international chief advertising officer (and president of Bacardi World Manufacturers), Ned Duggan. In 2025, the friction in its personal fairytale system got here within the kind not of a depraved witch, however a regulatory snafu – one that would simply have been quietly negotiated in non-public by attorneys. As an alternative, Duggan’s crew spun the second into reputational gold, incomes him the top spot in The Drum’s Rebel 50 within the course of.

Right here’s what occurred: precisely a 12 months in the past, Patrón launched its ‘100% Additive-Free Tequila’ campaign, trumpeting a proud historical past of three-ingredient purity in its tequila. “The key ingredient is that there are not any secret substances,” the marketing campaign proclaimed. The messaging landed the model in scorching water with Mexico’s Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT), which quickly suspended its NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana) Certification and successfully blocked (albeit briefly) the model’s capacity to export utilizing the protected phrase ‘tequila.’

Although insisting on “mutual respect” and a “constructive dialogue” with the CRT, Patrón pulled a uncommon ripcord within the ensuing fallout, doubling down with the tongue-in-cheek ‘Censored Truth’ campaign, utilizing the visible language of censorship to escalate the dispute right into a debate about ingredient transparency.

As the person with whom the buck finally stops for such a daring transfer, did Duggan ever doubt that daring plan of action? “No, we didn’t flinch. We have been lucky that our whole administration crew, our whole provide chain… there have been numerous the large crew behind this and all of us felt that that is one thing that’s so necessary to what Patrón is that we have to be daring and we have to inform the story in essentially the most disruptive means potential,” he says.

Duggan is, actually, pretty sanguine about that set of promoting choices that noticed him voted by friends as essentially the most rebellious advertising chief on the planet. Revolt? Perhaps, he says, however not revolt for its personal sake. “Do I really feel like a insurgent? Finally, I’m a storyteller and our crew tells model tales. Within the case of the Patrón work, it was telling a narrative that’s a part of the DNA of the model. We have been standing up for territory that was essential to us.”

Removed from on the lookout for a battle, Duggan says, Patrón was merely defending its proper to inform clients what it had all the time informed them: that it’s a tequila with simply three, high-quality substances. “There have been challenges to our capacity to inform that story and that’s what we really feel makes Patrón distinct. In order that was a kind of conditions the place we have been prepared to go to the mat and to face up for what the model believed in. So we did.

“It wasn’t a technique to be rebellious, however it was a technique to face up for and to speak what the model is all about.”

insurgent by finding out finance

If you wish to go on the lookout for revolt in Duggan’s life, you’ll discover it in an unlikely place: his early profession in finance.

In an inversion of the Hollywood-honored story of a child abandoning their mother and father’ Stem ambitions for a profession within the arts, Duggan says that his training (first a BS in finance, later an MBA) and his early profession in banking have been a revolt of types from his extra liberal-arts inventory (his father was a Washington, DC speech author and his mom an accounts particular person in promoting.)

Since that MBA, Duggan’s solely had one gig, Bacardi, since becoming a member of as a model supervisor on the Gray Goose account again in 2008. But it surely hasn’t felt like one gig, he says. The corporate has taken him from Florida to Bermuda and now to London. “Typically, I really feel like I’ve been in three or 4 completely different corporations,” he says.

Describing Bacardi as a “small firm with huge manufacturers,” Duggan places his longevity there right down to the entrepreneurial agility of the still-family-owned enterprise and the dynamism of its continued urge for food for buying thrilling manufacturers (together with Patrón in 2018 and, extra just lately, Ilegal Mezcal in 2023).

It’s that diverse portfolio of heritage and purchased manufacturers at various ranges of internationalization that the majority makes Duggan love what he does. Take elderflower liqueur St Germain, acquired again in 2012 however “nonetheless very early in its life stage,” having fun with speedy worldwide progress off the again of culture-focused work, together with a partnership with actor Sophie Turner. 

Or Gray Goose vodka, “acquired in 2004 and actually having a second once more,” thanks partly to advert work just like the latest Zoe Saldaña marketing campaign ‘Make Time Wait’ and a partnership with the US Open now a few many years outdated. Final 12 months, he says, was essentially the most profitable within the partnership’s historical past, shifting over 700,000 ‘Honey Deuce’ cocktails (that’s one-and-a-half cocktails a second), to the tune of $12m in gross sales. Or D’ussé Cognac, constructed round a 2012 relaunch in a partnership with Jay-Z and Roc Nation. “That was one of many highlights of my profession,” he says.

‘Manufacturers as experiences’

For every of these manufacturers, Duggan says, the core technique is similar: understanding the model when it comes to the life-style it encapsulates and delivering experiences in service of that life-style. “All of those manufacturers stand for a life-style. It’s extra than simply the merchandise we promote but in addition the experiences that we offer, whether or not it’s in a bar or restaurant or at a music pageant. That’s finally what persons are shopping for.”

That is more true within the spirits world than wherever else, Duggan says: the model or cocktail you order is a communication in addition to a purchase order. “When somebody walks as much as a bar and orders a Patrón Reposado on the rocks, it broadcasts to your entire bar who that particular person is, how they really feel about themselves and the way they need to be seen. If that very same particular person walks up and orders a Bacardi pina colada, individuals will have a look at that particular person very in a different way and that particular person will really feel very in a different way about themselves.

“The spirit model that somebody orders is the best way that somebody is projecting their identification. We’re very cognizant of that as we’re constructing our manufacturers, not solely by way of product credentials and intrinsics – which, after all, have to be distinctive – however across the experiences, whether or not it’s by way of partnership, content material or bodily experiences. That’s the place our manufacturers are made.”

Duggan’s 3-step brand-building philosophy

The 12 months Patrón has simply loved is maybe an ideal case examine in something top CMOs have now been saying for years: sensible model husbandry is now as a lot about response as it’s about motion and response means assembly the world as it’s fairly than designing it as you want to it to be. However for Duggan, that doesn’t imply absolutely ceding management a lot because it calls for working from a base of sturdy self-knowledge.

“There was a time when advertising was far more managed,” he says. “And now with the fragmented media market, with influencer advertising, with transparency, with the savviness of customers, there may be numerous chaos; a component of not essentially all the time being in 100% management of the message. That’s why it’s so necessary to be genuine and to be sure that, as a lot as potential, you direct the messaging, as a result of individuals will odor it for those who’re not. Within the chaos comes an concept of once you’re staying true to one thing.”

The ensuing picture of the CMO, for Duggan, is just not that of a director however of an “orchestrator,” he says, acknowledging that “advertising is a crew sport.” “My job is to create an surroundings for the crew and the prolonged crew of businesses to really feel an absence of concern when creating work and to have the ability to transfer shortly and to be empowered. The command-and-control surroundings that existed for a few years doesn’t exist at present.”

So, need to be a insurgent like Duggan (even when he’s reluctant to assert the title)? Right here’s his advertising course in three factors:

1. “Perceive what makes your model distinct. What are the core attributes that make you completely different from the opposite manufacturers which might be that you simply’re competing in opposition to?”
2. “Keep completely true to these and discover inventive methods to inform your story.”
3. “Bear in mind, what you do is as necessary as the way you talk.”