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Pernod Ricard is making a subtle but consequential change to the way it thinks about growth. Instead of starting with a brand and asking where that brand can sell more bottles, it increasingly wants to start with a consumer occasion, understand how that occasion is changing, and then decide which brands, formats and serves are best placed to win it.
That is the logic behind the remit of Donny Tobin, Pernod Ricard’s new vice-president of business acceleration and transformation. Tobin previously served as CFO of The Absolut Group and has spent more than two decades inside Pernod Ricard, having joined the company in 2003. His new mandate is focused on interpreting changes in the drinks market, identifying new growth spaces with local markets and translating those insights back into portfolio decisions.
The role also sits inside a much larger organisational reset. Pernod Ricard has reorganised much of its spirits business around two global units. Gold contains aged spirits and Champagne, while Crystal brings together non-aged and highly mixable categories including vodka, gin, tequila, rum, aperitifs and ready-to-drink products. Stéphanie Durroux, previously CEO of The Absolut Group, was named CEO of Crystal, while Nodjame Cecile Fouad took charge of Gold. The structure was conceived as part of a wider effort to simplify the business and increase agility after a difficult period for global spirits.
Crystal includes some of Pernod Ricard’s most internationally recognisable brands, including Absolut, Malibu, Havana Club, Olmeca, Altos, Del Maguey and Monkey 47, while the wider group portfolio also gives it aperitif and non-alcoholic propositions such as Lillet, Italicus, Malfy, Beefeater 0.0%, Ramazzotti Arancia 0.0% and Lillet Blanc 0%. Pernod Ricard already classifies both non-alcoholic and RTD products as distinct parts of its House of Brands.
The important point for brand owners is that Crystal is not really a category strategy in the conventional sense. It is closer to an occasion operating system.
Vodka, tequila, gin, rum, aperitifs and RTDs have different production methods, consumer equities and category economics. What connects them commercially is their ability to move relatively easily between serves and settings - cocktails, long drinks, spritzes, canned formats, lower-ABV serves, daytime drinking, outdoor consumption and alcohol-free alternatives.
That makes them particularly adaptable at a time when the industry’s historical dependence on the late-night drinking occasion is becoming less reliable.
Pernod Ricard’s own financial disclosures demonstrate why management is looking for new growth mechanics. In its fiscal third quarter ended March 2026, organic net sales were essentially flat at +0.1%, while nine-month sales remained down 4.4%. The US was down 12% organically in the quarter and China down 7%. Yet RTD sales increased 26% in Q3 and 16% over the first nine months. Pernod explicitly identified music festivals, convenience through RTDs and broader drinking occasions through low- and no-alcohol products among the actions it was using to capture changing consumer demand.
For CMOs, that contrast matters. The company's fastest-moving opportunities are increasingly appearing across formats and occasions, rather than being confined to the traditional growth trajectory of an individual spirits category.
There is an important qualification to Pernod Ricard’s bullishness around clear spirits: the underlying market data does not suggest that every unaged category is automatically growing.
Quite the opposite.
IWSR’s final 2025 global data described beverage alcohol as undergoing a "major reset". Total beverage alcohol volume declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, falling 2%, while beer, wine and spirits all contracted. RTDs were the only major conventional alcohol category to post volume growth. Tequila and bitters/spirit aperitifs were among the smaller pockets of spirits growth, but the broader category remained under pressure.
IWSR’s preliminary 2025 results similarly showed spirits volume down 4% across the markets covered, or down about 1% after excluding national spirits such as baijiu. Vodka volume itself declined 3%.
So the strategic thesis is not simply "white spirits are growing faster than brown spirits".
A stronger interpretation is that mixable brands have more ways to compete for a shrinking number of drinking occasions.
A whisky designed primarily around neat pours, premium highballs or after-dinner consumption can certainly broaden its repertoire, but a vodka platform can move more naturally from a two-ingredient long drink to an Espresso Martini, a Cosmopolitan, a spirit-based RTD or a lower-strength cocktail. An aperitif can compete for brunch, lunch and early-evening consumption. Gin can stretch from a classic G&T into spritz-style serves and then into a zero-alcohol line extension.
That flexibility matters because consumers are reducing intensity even when they remain engaged with alcohol.
In March 2026, IWSR found that the average number of drinks consumed per occasion across its 15 tracked markets had fallen from 4.4 in March 2024 to 3.9. The research concluded that moderation had become structurally embedded rather than simply reflecting a short economic cycle.
At the same time, the industry is dealing with a long-term demographic and demand problem. IWSR's first ten-year global forecast expects total alcohol consumption to remain below 2025 levels even in 2035 despite growth in the global legal-drinking-age population. The forecast anticipates falling consumption in several large mature markets, including the US and China, while newer formats such as canned cocktails take consumption occasions from traditional beer, wine and spirits.
This changes what "growth" means.
The old model rewarded maximising penetration and frequency around a core category ritual. The emerging model increasingly rewards having a brand architecture that can follow the consumer across multiple intensity levels and social contexts.
A consumer might choose a full-strength cocktail on Friday night, an RTD at a Saturday festival, a spritz at Sunday brunch and a zero-alcohol version at a weekday gathering. From the consumer’s perspective these are different choices. From a portfolio owner’s perspective, they can become four monetisable expressions of essentially the same social need.
That is the deeper significance of Pernod Ricard’s Crystal structure.
It treats repertoire as an asset.
No part of Pernod Ricard’s strategy better illustrates the shift than ready-to-drink.
RTDs have moved well beyond their pandemic-era reputation as a convenience format. In the US, IWSR says their share of total beverage alcohol volume increased from 6% in 2019 to 13% in 2025. Spirits-based RTDs grew another 14% in 2025 even as much of the broader US alcohol market declined.
Globally, the direction is similarly favourable, although the category is maturing unevenly by market. IWSR reported RTD volume growth across its major markets in 2025 and noted that premium-and-above RTDs grew by more than 15%, even as the US RTD category experienced its first overall annual volume decline in a decade.
Pernod Ricard’s own +26% Q3 FY26 RTD sales growth therefore stands out against a group whose total organic sales were flat in the quarter.
But the more interesting lesson is how Pernod is building the category.
Rather than treating RTDs purely as standalone new-product development, it is using them as portable brand occasions.
Absolut and Coca-Cola launched Absolut Vodka & Sprite, initially in Great Britain and then other European markets, turning one of the most familiar mixer combinations into a branded packaged serve.
In the US, Absolut teamed with Ocean Spray to package the culturally established vodka-cranberry combination using Absolut vodka and Ocean Spray cranberry juice. The collaboration gave Absolut access not simply to another flavour, but to an immediately recognisable consumption ritual with existing consumer memory.
Malibu has followed a similar approach with Dole. The two brands announced a US range built around rum and pineapple, with Malibu & Dole RTDs scheduled for nationwide rollout in early 2026.
These partnerships point toward a useful strategic distinction for alcohol marketers.
Traditional spirits innovation usually begins with the liquid: a new flavour, maturation, finish, botanical, provenance or expression. Occasion innovation begins with the consumer shortcut.
Sprite already means something in a long mixed drink. Ocean Spray already means something in a vodka cranberry. Dole already owns strong pineapple associations. Combining those associations with an alcohol brand reduces the amount of consumer education required to explain the proposition.
The resulting RTD is doing several jobs simultaneously: it recruits consumers who may find bottle-and-mixer preparation inconvenient, makes the brand viable in venues where full cocktail preparation is difficult, creates a more controlled serve size, gives retailers a chilled single-serve proposition and potentially extends the brand into outdoor, festival and informal social occasions.
That makes RTD less an adjacent category and more a distribution layer for brand equity.
There is a warning for C-suite leaders, however. As RTDs mature, simply adding another canned line will not be enough. IWSR says future category growth is becoming increasingly dependent on frequency among existing RTD consumers rather than continual recruitment of new drinkers.
This raises the bar for innovation. The question is no longer "Should our brand have an RTD?" It is "Which occasion can our RTD own that the parent bottle currently cannot?"
That is a much more demanding brief.
Pernod Ricard’s description of festivals as a potential "new on-premise" may sound like marketing rhetoric, but the economics of live entertainment make the comparison increasingly credible.
Live Nation reported that almost 49 million fans attended its events in the second quarter of 2026, up 10% year on year. By mid-July, more than 143 million Live Nation concert tickets had already been sold for 2026, more than 14 million ahead of the previous year’s pace. International attendance at stadiums, arenas and festivals grew by more than 20%.
Brands are following the audience. Live Nation’s sponsorship revenue rose 12% in Q2 2026, sponsorship adjusted operating income rose 13%, and its expanding venue and festival network accounted for 70% of sponsorship growth. More than 95% of projected 2026 sponsorship commitments had already been booked by the end of July.
For drinks businesses, the relevance of festivals extends beyond media exposure.
The conventional on-premise gives brands access to a drinker at the moment of purchase and consumption. A festival can add several additional layers: sampling, menu placement, branded physical environments, artist and creator associations, social content, CRM capture, merchandising and subsequent retail activation.
Pernod Ricard is already applying that model through Absolut.
At Coachella in 2025, Absolut operated the House of Cosmo as the festival’s official vodka partner, combining cocktails with an experiential space, creator collaborations and a Paris Hilton partnership. The campaign extended beyond the venue through a ready-to-serve Cosmopolitan and associated merchandise, effectively carrying the festival proposition into at-home consumption.
At Tomorrowland, Absolut’s 2026 partnership includes dedicated limited-edition bottles and a festival-specific Absolut Tomorrowland Spritz, turning sponsorship into both packaging and serve innovation rather than simply signage.
This matters even more given what newer research says about Gen Z.
The simplistic narrative that Gen Z is abandoning alcohol is becoming less useful. IWSR's March 2026 consumer research found that 74% of legal-drinking-age Gen Z respondents in its tracked markets had consumed alcohol, close to the 76% rate among adults overall. Gen Z's share of the drinking population increased from 13% in March 2024 to 17% in March 2026 as more members of the cohort reached legal drinking age.
What differs is the context of consumption.
IWSR found that Gen Z over-indexes on cocktails and RTDs and that its leading drinking occasions include socialising, events and casual meals. The company characterises Gen Z alcohol consumption as more strongly anchored in connection and shared experiences than solitary relaxation. Its recommendation to brand owners is consequently explicit: build products and marketing around relevant social occasions including festivals, outdoor gatherings and casual meet-ups.
That makes festivals unusually attractive commercial laboratories.
A brand can test a new serve with thousands of legal-age consumers in an intense cultural environment, observe throughput, collect consumer feedback, identify which flavours photograph and share well, track social amplification, and then decide whether the concept deserves broader on-premise or retail investment.
For marketers, the KPI architecture should evolve accordingly. Footfall and impressions are insufficient. The more meaningful questions are whether festival trial converts into repeat purchase, whether a festival serve can migrate into retail, whether consumers remember the brand rather than just the event, and whether the activation builds identifiable audiences that can be re-engaged after the music stops.
The best festival sponsorship is therefore not sponsorship at all. It is temporary route-to-market infrastructure.
Pernod Ricard’s occasion strategy also explains why the group increasingly regards moderation as an opportunity rather than simply a threat to volume.
The market evidence supports that position.
IWSR estimates global no-alcohol analogue volumes grew about 9% in 2025 and forecasts the category to expand 36% between 2024 and 2029, reaching more than 18 billion servings annually.
The US has been an especially strong recruitment market. IWSR previously reported 37 million additional no-alcohol consumers entering the category between 2022 and 2024, while US full-strength beverage volumes declined over the same longer-term period.
More importantly for alcohol brand owners, no-alcohol consumption is frequently additive to a consumer repertoire rather than evidence of permanent abstention.
IWSR found that 13% of US drinkers in April 2024 consumed both full-strength and no-alcohol products, nearly double the proportion a year earlier. Among Millennials, the figure reached 22%.
In separate research covering leading markets, 30% of no/low consumers said that on an occasion where they had chosen a no/low product in 2024, they would previously have consumed a full-strength drink.
Pernod Ricard’s expanding range now includes Beefeater 0.0%, Lillet Blanc 0%, Ramazzotti Arancia 0.0%, Seagram’s 0.0%, Almave and several other alcohol-free expressions.
The strategic objective should not be framed as creating a parallel "sober" business disconnected from the alcohol portfolio.
The larger prize is occasion retention.
Imagine a consumer attending dinner who begins with a full-strength cocktail but switches to a non-alcoholic serve later in the evening. Historically, the spirits brand could lose that second occasion to water or soft drinks. A credible alcohol-free extension allows the parent brand to remain present.
Likewise, a brand that can offer a 0.0% spritz at lunch, a lower-ABV drink in the afternoon and a full-strength cocktail that evening can potentially increase the number of occasions in which it is considered even while average ethanol consumption declines.
This suggests that the most strategically useful metric for major alcohol companies may eventually be broader than alcohol volume or even brand penetration.
It is share of social occasion.
A brand that maximises share of social occasion does not need the consumer to make the same alcohol choice every time. It needs to remain relevant as the consumer moves between full-strength, lower-strength and alcohol-free states.
That is a far better fit with how moderation is evolving.
The second major growth pillar behind Pernod Ricard’s strategy is geographic.
Developed alcohol markets are no longer sufficient to support the growth expectations the largest spirits groups historically enjoyed. IWSR expects developing economies including India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and Ethiopia to contribute some of the largest increases in beverage alcohol volumes between 2024 and 2029.
The longer-term divergence is even more pronounced. IWSR's ten-year outlook forecasts India growing sufficiently to become the world’s second-largest alcohol market behind China by 2032, while consumption falls substantially in several traditional developed markets.
India is already performing differently from much of the world. Total beverage alcohol volume there increased 4% in 2025, according to IWSR, even while global volumes declined.
Pernod Ricard is seeing similar momentum within its own business. In Q3 FY26, India sales grew 11% organically, with imported spirits delivering strong double-digit growth and Absolut among the international brands performing well.
Brazil presents a more complicated picture. IWSR's preliminary data showed total beverage alcohol volume declining 4% there in 2025, illustrating why category-level growth cannot simply be inferred from national economic development.
China is more complicated still. Overall beverage alcohol is expected to remain under structural pressure, yet IWSR sees opportunities within particular imported categories including gin, rum, tequila and RTDs even as total market volumes decline.
That distinction is critical.
The opportunity in emerging markets is not to replicate the European or American cocktail market several years later. It is to understand which global behaviours can cross borders and which require local reinterpretation.
A Mexican brunch occasion, a Brazilian music festival, an Indian premium hotel occasion and a Chinese cocktail bar may all create opportunities for clear spirits, but the price architecture, flavours, mixers, social meaning, purchase channel and brand status cues can be radically different.
The organisational logic behind Crystal gives Pernod Ricard an interesting advantage here. Instead of requiring every local business to make independent bets across vodka, tequila, gin, rum, aperitifs and RTDs, it can theoretically ask a more commercially useful question:
Which combination of category, brand, format and price point is most likely to win the next important occasion in this market?
That is portfolio management built from demand backwards.
It is also why Tobin’s focus on speed matters. Consumer culture moves internationally through travel, social platforms, streaming, food culture and music considerably faster than the traditional annual innovation cycle of a global spirits business. By the time a trend is visible in historical depletion data, the most valuable recruitment period may already be underway.
Winning therefore requires a tighter loop between cultural intelligence, consumer research, innovation, commercial execution and portfolio capital allocation.
For large alcohol groups, this is as much an operating-model challenge as a marketing challenge.
Pernod Ricard’s Crystal strategy should not be read simply as an endorsement of vodka, gin, tequila or RTDs.
It represents a more fundamental response to a market in which total alcohol volumes are under pressure, consumer intensity is declining, traditional premiumisation has weakened, social occasions are fragmenting and growth is moving toward developing markets and new formats. IWSR has explicitly observed that multinational spirits companies are recalibrating away from strategies centred overwhelmingly on premiumisation toward greater attention to volume, relevance and more balanced portfolios.
The organisational response is to stop expecting every brand to win everywhere.
For years, global drinks companies built sophisticated brand pyramids, price ladders and category strategies. The next competitive layer is likely to be an equally sophisticated occasion architecture.
That architecture begins by identifying the occasions with structural staying power - earlier socialising, brunch, festivals, casual outdoor gatherings, premium cocktail experiences, convenient single serves and moderation-friendly occasions. Then the company selects only the brands with a credible right to participate.
The distinction is important. Occasion-led strategy does not mean trend chasing.
In fact, it should impose greater discipline.
A premium tequila does not need an answer to every emerging behaviour. A vodka does not need to launch every fashionable flavour. A gin does not automatically deserve a zero-alcohol extension. A whisky does not need to become a festival brand simply because festivals are growing.
The portfolio owner’s advantage comes from being able to choose different brands for different jobs.
Pernod Ricard is also demonstrating that innovation should increasingly be measured by the number of new occasions it unlocks rather than the number of new SKUs it creates. Absolut & Sprite opens a convenient long-drink occasion. Absolut and Ocean Spray packages a familiar cocktail ritual. Malibu and Dole connects two established tropical equities. Alcohol-free extensions preserve participation during moderation. Festival activations create trial environments that can feed both on-premise and retail.
For finance and marketing leaders, this should also alter capital allocation.
Pernod Ricard currently expects advertising and promotion investment to remain at roughly 16% of net sales while simultaneously pursuing a €1 billion efficiency programme through FY29. That combination increases the pressure on marketing leaders to prove that investment is flowing toward the brands, occasions and markets with the strongest incremental economics rather than simply defending historical spending patterns.
The most useful executive dashboard would therefore connect cultural signals to commercial outcomes: emerging occasion size, legal-age consumer recruitment, trial-to-repeat conversion, incremental household penetration, revenue per occasion, RTD cannibalisation versus incremental sales, festival activation conversion, brand consideration among participants and portfolio-wide retention across full-strength and no-alcohol consumption.
This is the real strategic lesson behind Pernod Ricard’s bet.
As global alcohol consumption becomes less frequent and more deliberate, the industry cannot rely on selling consumers more of the same drink in the same setting.
It has to become better at being present when consumers do choose to drink - and, increasingly, when they choose not to.
Clear spirits are well positioned for that world because they can move easily between cocktails, mixers, cans, spritzes, lower-strength serves and cultural settings. But versatility alone is not a competitive advantage. Every major spirits company can launch an RTD, sponsor a festival or formulate an alcohol-free extension. Bacardi’s own 2026 consumer work, for example, similarly points toward earlier drinking, lighter serves, meaningful social connection and cocktails becoming broader lifestyle experiences, suggesting the occasion shift is industry-wide rather than unique to Pernod Ricard.
The competitive advantage will come from how quickly a company can detect a durable occasion, select the right brand, build the right format, activate it in the right channel and stop investing when the evidence is weak.
That is why Pernod Ricard’s organisational restructuring may ultimately prove more important than any single clear-spirit launch.
Crystal turns a collection of brands into a portfolio designed to move with the consumer.
In an industry where consumers are drinking more selectively, that ability to follow the occasion may become considerably more valuable than owning the category.
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