The Merchant's Grandson

David Gluckman, the adman who created Baileys Irish Cream, and how flawed market research nearly killed the brand before launch, but it succeeded anyway in supermarkets, not the venues everyone assumed.

A case study in trusting what people actually do over what a focus group says they’ll do.

Chapters:

• 0:00 Why early market research nearly killed the brand
• 2:20 Why a focus group was the wrong way to test it
• 3:12 How two off-duty strangers became the real signal
• 5:21 What happened when it sold four million units in a year
• 5:36 Why it grew up in an unexpected channel, not the obvious one
• 7:21 Why a competitor couldn’t copy the trick
• 8:13 Why old-school brand builders still beat modern market-research thinking

This conversation was originally recorded for the Maffeo Drinks podcast. Find all of David Gluckman's episodes at themaffeodrinkspodcast.com.