28 | The Grocer | 24 August 2019 Get the full story at thegrocer.co.uk

big interview Paula Lindenberg

Daniel Woolfson

P

aula Lindenberg is sitting in a makeshift
hut on Brighton beach, and the rain is
lashing down – so much for the British
summer. Seagulls screech and squeal as
t he y flo c k a rou nd u s. T he ra i n i s m a k i ng
it virtually impossible to take notes.
I’m not sure this is what AB InBev – or Budweiser
Brewing Group as its UK business is now called – had
in mind when a Friday afternoon meet and greet on
the beach, where the brewing behemoth is running a
Corona-branded beach-clean, was proposed.
Still, it’s refreshing to meet somewhere that isn’t a
polished office, or a pricey London bar. In fact, there’s
a lot that’s refreshing about Lindenberg, who took up
the reins of AB InBev’s UK operations as its new presi-
dent in January.
After starting out in marketing at the likes of J&J,
Unilever and Philip Morris, Lindenberg moved to AB
InBev 18 years ago, holding marketing, branding and
insight positions in Ecuador and New York, before
returning home figuratively and literally as VP of mar-
keting for Ambev in the country of her birth: Brazil.
“My main expertise, my strongest arm, has always
been understanding consumers, how they engage with
each other, what they choose, and then tr y ing to build
brands that fulfil those needs.”
AB InBev clearly has a preference for promoting mar-
keters, rather than salespeople, into top jobs. Jason
Warner, her predecessor under whose tenure the com-
pany overtook Molson Coors to become the UK’s sec-
ond-biggest brewer, was a marketer too.
Since taking on the UK role, Lindenberg’s been busy
overseeing a major rebrand of the UK business, chang-
ing the name from AB InBev to that of its fastest-grow-
ing brand (Budweiser added an insane £43.8m to its
value over the year ending 20 April 2019 [Nielsen]).
Meanwhile its HQ migrated from a nondescript busi-
ness park in Luton to a swanky new Shoreditch base.
Lindenberg says this is all about making the brewer
“more recognisable” and making it easier for retailers

• and importantly on-trade businesses, with whom it is

Leading Budweiser

Brewing into battle

Paula Lindenberg is targeting Heineken’s UK

number one spot with a more recognisable, nimble

and innovative Budweiser Brewing Group

less embedded – to engage with it, as it looks to knock

Heineken from the top spot in the UK beer market.

So is it going to beat Heineken this year? “I’m cer-

tainly going to work hard for that,” she says. It’s by no

means impossible, given the performance of Budweiser

Brewing Co’s biggest brands over the past year. As well

as the massive boom for Bud, Stella added £40m while

Corona added £21.5m in value in the off-trade this past

year [Nielsen 52 w/e 20 April 2019].

That’s not to say there aren’t parts of its portfolio

that aren’t working – Beck’s is in a significant decline,

for instance. But the likes of Stella and Corona’s recent

good fortunes mean Beck’s isn’t a huge priority.

In essence, Budweiser Brewing Group doesn’t need

to worry about the supermarkets (apart from maybe

Waitrose, which has ditched several of its main brands

to make room for craft beers recently), where it’s already

number one.

Rather, it’s Britain’s pubs and bars where its next bat-

tle with Heineken will be. And given Heineken owns

thousands of pubs, this will be no small feat. “We’re

ver y strong in the off-trade but when it comes to brand

equity we see that our brands have more equity than

distribution in the on-trade,” says Lindenberg. “Our

share of desire today is bigger than our market share.”

Which helps, in part, explain why Budweiser

Brewing Group is seeking greater visibility for itself as

an entity, rather than the brands on their own.

New approach to innovation

But there’s more to the recent slew of changes than that.

Behind the scenes the business is changing the way it

approaches its core brands and getting more experi-

mental with NPD and innovation.

It has, for instance, created a standalone division,

dubbed DraftLine, its own in-house creative agency,

covering digital content production and media buying

as well as “real-time social listening and responding”.

DraftLine has been stacked with hires from produc-

tion companies, in-house studios, digital media pub-

lishers and TV networks. And the plan is for it to double