Beam Suntory

Top Shelf Integrity

How clear brand development, strategic storytelling and an empowered team transformed this player in spirits into an industry leader.

Beam Suntory is a world leader in premium spirits.

Their industry leadership is due in large part to the On Premise sales teams—and On Premise USA knew that they had assembled an all-star team. They knew that they had a suite of experts, each with unique backstories, connections and passions for the various spirits that they represented, but were unclear on how to connect and amplify those stories beyond their existing channels and PR efforts.

But this was more than just a tactical PR issue. This was a foundational branding issue. While the overarching Beam Suntory brand message was clear, how was the world going to get to know the people behind it? The people that they would ultimately do business with? How was this organization going to power a new perception of the Beam Suntory Brand?

It Starts at the Top: Leverage Your Leadership.

Through SimplyBe.’s custom corporate enterprise solutions, our team crafted a bespoke strategy to elevate the Beam Suntory On Premise Leadership team. By starting with strategic brand development for five key executives within this team, we were able to find and highlight this team’s strengths and capabilities to their target markets.

As a part of this initial exercise in branding, each executive received:

A unique brand identity
Target audiences and competitive analysis
Brand guidelines for written and visual communications
A map of their individual one, two, and three-year goals and objectives
A clear brand strategy catered to their target audiences and preferred content methods
A custom social media strategy, sample content and posting calendar

While each executive brand was designed to stand alone, each told a complimentary story to its counterparts. It was this intentional branding that laid the foundation for this team to stand out from the rest in the industry.

But our work didn’t stop with just identity and strategy development. As their ongoing brand support partner, we helped bring these stories to life through various forms of content and strategic sharing and amplification.

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Strategic Storytelling

Each individual on the On Premise Leadership team had not only a different story and therefore a different journey that led them to their position at Beam, but they also had unique audiences that preferred different methods of connection and forms of communication.

The unique strategies for our key executives ran the gamut of content mediums. In partnership with the On Premise team, SimplyBe. has produced:

The Top Shelf Integrity Podcast
Proof You Can, an original video series
Relevant industry articles
Company wide newsletters
Social media content across Linkedin and Instagram

All of this content is intentionally designed to help to tell the cohesive story of this unstoppable team.

Original content creation is key to paving the way to thought leadership. But to make these executives’ stories and experiences truly stand out, we went back to what makes this company tick—its vision and ethos of inspiring human connections.

Rather than reading a statement from the company, you’re now able to read an article written by Ken. Instead of glancing past another company press release, you saw Kathy’s post promoting the new podcast episode that she and her team published that morning. Instead of scrolling past a social post from the organization, you stopped and read the perspective piece that Rachel shared about being a female leader in a male-dominated industry.

Readers, audiences, key clients began to connect with the people behind this spirits behemoth. The impact and sheer connections that this team has experienced after intentionally leaning into this work was clear.

Empower Your Masses

The On-Premise Executive Leadership Team was beginning to establish a thought leadership platform to power a new perception of the Beam Suntory Brand. Five executive voices and five executive brands—it’s a lot for just five people to carry. Luckily, part of SimplyBe.’s corporate enterprise solution includes driving impact with the support of the greater team.

With the goals of activating, engaging and motivating the organization and positioning Beam-Suntory’s On-Premise Team as experts and innovators in the spirits industry, we created a tool to help maximize this message.

An original Content Hub.

A Content Hub is a suite of monthly original content—videos, graphics, social copy, and more—that empowers your wider organization to directly promote the thought leadership of your team of executives. We were therefore able to arm the larger team with the tools to amplify these key voices.

A Content Hub empowers the greater organization as the integral part of this initiative that they are. A Content Hub takes all of the powerful content being created at the top and micros it down to accessible, bite-size pieces.

Beam Suntory - Client Story - Content Hub

Simply put, this is a tool to scale expertise, amplify reach, build relationships and increase brand equity.

The content within the Hub did not stop at simply promoting our executives’ platforms, however. It opened up the opportunity to tap into hot issues in hospitality and the general market—in alignment with team members’ passions and experiences—to inform content to capture attention and resonate with target audiences and key clients.

Activate Your Rising Talent

If you only invest in your leadership, the buck stops there. Who is to continue this work and continue to drive these results if your leadership changes? It’s crucial that companies invest in their rising talent—the next generation of leaders—and provide them with the skills to carry on your legacy.

Concurrently with our strategic branding and original content development, SimplyBe. has provided an ongoing workshop curriculum for various teams within the Beam Suntory organization for groups ranging from 10—50+. From other executive teams to brand advocacy groups, to sales teams, to Women’s ERG cohorts, our workshops are all in service of activating authenticity internally and externally.

Activating your rising talent builds ambassadors of your brand and organization. These ambassadors are now armed with the tools to tell the story of Beam Suntory as a thought leading organization in the spirits industry.

Drive Impact

Over the course of six months, our team:

Generated and published six long form blogs published resulting in a total of 649 likes, 113 comments, 15 shares and over 2,000 views, with an additional 45 blogs created and in the content queue.
Crafted and published 75 Instagram posts written and shared on behalf of the VP of On-Premise USA. These posts increased her audience engagement by 19.6% and increased her content interactions by 29.5%.
Created and published seven videos as a part of our executive team’s thought leadership strategy. These videos increased content interactions by 370% as a result of the Proof You Can Video series.
Scripted and produced 19 episodes of The Top Shelf Integrity Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts. The show has garnered 3,251 total podcast downloads, 121 average episode downloads and 119 weekly podcast downloads. This show has featured upward of 27 people from the Beam Suntory organization, boosting brand awareness and unlocking networking opportunities for each individual. This effort in particular has increased morale and engagement within the company.
Created and designed a newsletter on behalf of the Senior Manager of Trade engagement resulting in a 52.8% open rate (average industry open rate is 13.78%) and a 21.3% click through rate.

At the end of the day, people do business with people. Through a strategic map of key executive brands, strategic storytelling, empowering the company’s masses, and activating rising talent, SimplyBe. helped Beam Suntory elevate its voices—the humans behind the brand—to drive impact through authenticity.

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