Jonnie Cahill, chief marketing officer of Heineken USA, can still reel off the taglines of favourite TV ads from his childhood, like the Smash Aliens, and the Cadbury’s Caramel Bunny.
“I was fascinated by brands as far back as I can remember,” he says.
The Santry native studied marketing at Dublin Institute of Technology, now TU Dublin. “From the first lecture I knew it was what I wanted to do. I loved every second of it,” says Cahill.
While in college he worked part time as a rep for drinks giant Diageo, organising student events, a “fun role” that helped him land a job with Diageo on graduation.
Though he subsequently left to work for creative agency Originate, then a start-up, he returned to Diageo to work on Guinness, Budweiser and ultimately the Guinness global brand team, “a real privilege”, for any marketer, especially an Irish one.
Next came a foray into telecommunications, working with O2, a brand-led consumer telco which took up sponsorship of Irish rugby, and launched the award winning Be the Difference campaign which saw rugby fans’ names printed on players’ jerseys.
Cahill is modest and describes himself as being “on the fringes” of all these successful campaigns, of simply being “in the right place at the right time when so much amazing work was done”. Yet his marketing nous is what unites them.
Little wonder that “beer came calling again”, this time in the form of Heineken.
He spent four years working for the brand in Moscow, which he loved, before moving to Amsterdam to lead global marketing of Heineken’s low and no alcohol products.
He was busy driving the expansion of Low and No alcohol products such as Heineken Zero globally when, in 2018, the phone rang with an offer to become chief marketing officer of Heineken USA.
“As a marketer it was the dream call. I knew I needed a poker face but I could only manage it for about three seconds because my tail was wagging,” he recalls.
“Spiritually the USA is the home of the discipline. I was the guy who had run the spreadsheet that booked the pub promotions, who had called the publicans. I had worked up through the ranks, so it was actually very humbling and a real moment of reflection for me.”
He only wobbled for a nanosecond. “With all of these jobs there’s also a moment of ‘Oh My God’, when you think ‘I can’t do this’. Then you go and do it,” he says.
The US is a huge and highly competitive beer market and Heineken, a premium import, is one of its smaller players.
“As a marketer, being a small player means you have to work harder. You don’t have the investment of an ABI (Anheuser-Busch InBev) or a Molson Coors, so you’ve got to be more creative, quicker, smarter and more agile. You’ve got to drive the innovation agenda,” he says.
Creativity has proven consistently to have the biggest impact in terms of return on investment
For him that included rolling out Heineken Zero across the US. Today it has 30 per cent share of the non-alcoholic beer market.
He is also responsible for the Dos Equis beer brand, famous for its peerless, “Most Interesting Man in the World” campaigns. “It was like being handed the White Album and being asked to write another one,” he says.
With the brand in double digit growth, he smashed it.
In marketing, creativity is key.
“Creativity has proven consistently to have the biggest impact in terms of return on investment. It does that by creating connections and emotions in people’s minds,” he explains.
Ireland has some natural advantages in this.
“In a small country, you develop empathy. You bump into the same people again and again. In almost any industry you hear ‘oh everybody knows everybody’. The outcome of that is a highly developed commitment to empathy, to trying to understand the other person,” he explains.
True creatives need a strong understanding of the person they are engaging with, otherwise they are simply broadcasting. It’s why he hates the word consumers. “I object to it. They are people. They’re your dad, your sister, your postman,” he says.
Ireland has always rewarded creativity. “It has always been valued in our culture, whether it’s literature, poetry or story telling in a bar. It’s not something you turn on, or book between 3pm and 4pm, it’s in our DNA. The market here is very open to creativity, it wants brands to do amazing things, and rewards that.”
That results in amazing work, such as that of Rothco which is now part the same group as Droga5, one of the most iconic agencies in the world, he points out.
The presence of major multinational brands here, from FMCG companies such as Kellogg’s and Pepsi, to tech companies such as Facebook and Google, represents a massive opportunity for Irish agencies, he reckons, particularly the latter.
“In the tech space, those brands are moving from ‘what we do’ and ‘who we are’ to ‘here’s why you should love us’,” he explains, and Irish creatives, with their empathy, curiosity and storytelling abilities are well placed to help them do that.
There is an openness to working with Irish agencies
“We have a demonstrated ability to develop emotionally charged advertising very well, not just ‘roll up and buy this’ but ‘feel this’. It’s one of our unique advantages in this community,” he says.
As the industry body, IAPI is constantly reminding global brands and companies “that Ireland is a destination where they will get great work,” says Cahill.
Its work is paying dividends.
“There is an openness to working with Irish agencies. The country has a strong reputation for creativity on a macro level, way beyond advertising,” he says.
The Creative is Native campaign is building on this. “Like all great campaigns it’s about sticking with it over time and continuously broadening its reach,” says Cahill.
“But I truly believe we are pushing an open door.”
Ireland: where Creative is Native is an IAPI initiative to promote Ireland as a Centre of Excellence for the commercial creativity industry.
Ireland is a country where being creative is second nature; world-renowned for its writers, artists, poets, musicians and all-round change-makers. These talents spill into the commercial creative world of advertising, design and communications.
IAPI believe that the time has never been more opportune for the sector to grow their international reach. For brand owners looking to launch into the European market, Ireland is now a viable and agile alternative, aside from being the only English-speaking country left in the EU.
No longer do brand marketers seek creative expertise abroad as they know they can work with the global best, right here in Ireland. Domestic and International brands such as An Post, AIB, Vodafone, SuperValu, Allianz, Nissan, Lidl, Jameson, Diageo and Toyota and many others are creating world beating communications using Irish creative and media agencies.
Discover IAPI’s Creative is Native initiative - www.creativeisnative.com
