Pernod Ricard

PRICING STRATEGY · CONSUMER + MARKET INTELLIGENCE · PORTFOLIO INNOVATION

Two of Pernod Ricard's most storied names, two very different pricing puzzles. Chivas faced a perception problem hiding inside its own success: drinkers assume older means better, even as the industry's stock of mature barrels runs low. Martell faced something closer to a paradox – unlike whisky, cognac has no single attribute that reliably predicts value, with age, brand, decanter design and rarity all competing for influence with no consistent hierarchy between them.

Both answers came from the same instinct: look at what the market actually does, not what convention assumes.

For Chivas, that meant analysing tens of thousands of bottles across the secondary auction market to find where the conventional wisdom about age broke down, and where genuine gaps existed for new propositions to land.

For Martell, it meant reframing the question entirely — rather than asking what a bottle was worth, exploring how scarcity itself could be engineered, drawing on parallels from watches, sneakers, and even gaming consoles, where manufactured rarity reliably outperforms intrinsic product value.

Different categories, same discipline: rigorous data, applied with enough imagination to find an answer the brief didn't already assume.