The aftermath of the peak COVID era has meant a difficult adjustment for the beverage alcohol industry, with elevated consumption levels coming back to earth and price inflation putting a strain on consumer budgets.

Premium brands have been somewhat more resilient as consumers who traded up during the pandemic have been reluctant to trade back down, said Paul Basford, president and managing director of William Grant & Sons USA, speaking on this week’s edition of the Marketer’s Brief podcast.

“There has been undoubtedly a huge correction in consumption patterns from COVID to where we are now,” said Basford. “I think there’s a normalization going on now where people are returning to more normal consumption patterns, and that’s why we see the industry stabilizing and kind of resetting itself.”

William Grant markets a portfolio of spirits including Scotch whisky brands Glenfiddich, Balvenie and Monkey Shoulder, as well as Hendricks gin, Milagro tequila, Reyka vodka and Tullamore D.E.W. Irish whiskey. These brands have largely benefited from the premiumization trend. For example, the ultra-premium gin category, in which Grant markets the Silent Pool brand, is up 87% from 2019, Basford said. But smart marketing and innovation are critical as the industry normalizes.

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William Grant’s marketing strategies vary by brand, driven more by each brand’s consumers than the product category, Basford said. “We’ve really pushed our model to be consumer-centric versus trade-centric,” he said. “The consumer is our real only boss, as we say internally, and it’s a real motivating cry for a lot of our brand and our brand work. I think what consumers really want to see is something different.”

Hendrick’s, the superpremium gin brand created with the company by booze-focused ad agency Quaker City Mercantile, has cranked wild creativity from the brand’s “curious” nature, with a vessel resembling a poison bottle and long association with cucumbers. “Hendrick’s is a fabulous brand,” Basford said. “It’s a very heavily featured cocktail brand, and we innovate around that keep consumers excited and interested,” with features like an annual “Cabinet of Curiosity” botanical range. “That’s an important way of making a brand that's been around since 1999 relevant today.”

The Balvenie brand is behind the “Quest for Craft” series featuring video conversations by musician and producer Questlove. The series, which has featured guests such as Yo-Yo Ma, Patti Smith, Anderson .Paak and Fred Armisen among others, is meant to reinforce the notion of “craft” while contemporizing the 132-year-old brand. “It brings us into different audiences and different demographics as a brand, debunking the myth that single malt, and particularly Balvenie, is something for older people,” Basford said.

Milagro has taken off along with the tequila category, expanding its range with a new high-end Cristalino Añejo announced this week. Tequila has been a force in the spirits industry behind a celebrity endorsement trend and a taste profile that’s transformed it from a shot into a cocktail ingredient, Basford said. “I think the badge of having a tequila brand, the celebrity endorsement and the different taste became a very unique opportunity for many brands,” Basford said, adding that Milagro has “grown to almost a million cases from nowhere in five or six years.”

Premium brands have been safe, relative to mainstream bottled liquors, from the ready-to-drink trend that has put premade cocktails into cans and brought spirits into new places like convenience stores, Basford said. Although Basford acknowledged opportunity in the trend, he said it was not likely that William Grant would devote itself to such products at this time.

Non-alcohol is another story. Although William Grant in 2019 launched a low-alcohol line in the U.K. known as Atopia, Basford said non-alc spirits are still in the development stage. “I don’t think anybody has cracked the code yet on a really good non-alc spirit, like they have done in beer ... I would like to think that William Grant will be the first to do that, given our pioneering nature over time,” he said.