Growing Wrexham: Insights on International Brand-Building – Interview with marketing veteran James Wright

If you walked into one of those gigantic liquor stores in Los Angeles last autumn you might have been greeted on entering by a flashy display for Wrexham Lager six thousand miles from North Wales.

How come a regional British beer brand was being promoted California-style like one of the big global brands? 

The obvious connection of course was Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds, the co-owner of Wrexham AFC. In the Championship this season, they were still in League One last October when the company that invested in the club, Red Dragon Ventures, also bought the brewery. 

Back in the day in America, Budweiser bought a baseball team. This other-way-around twist of team buying beer was engineered by marketing veteran James Wright, who was the Wrexham brewery chief exec with a long track record in the global drinks industry.

iSportconnect caught up with him last week to gather some pointers on international brand-building.

What made the Wrexham deal work?

Wrexham was a family-owned regional brand and they didn’t know how to take it to the next level. When I first came on board, I had to pull it really back and go right back to the packaging, how consumers engaged with the brand and what the opportunity was. At the same time, we had this football club down the road that had a really interesting platform with the Disney TV series. So, brand awareness was very high internationally. More so than in the UK. The opportunity for us was more about North America where there was a high demand for the TV show and awareness. 

So it was about exporting the beer to a market where there was awareness of the Wrexham name because of the football series?

Well, not exactly. To build a consumer brand internationally you have to start with the actual physical product. We looked at how we produced under license within other countries and we decided to do that in the US and Canada and Australia to make sure we could service the market in a way that made financial sense because it’s a low-margin category. You need to make sure that you look at how you set up the infrastructure and the and the distribution and then finding the right partners, like Total Wine in California.

I originally made contact with them on LinkedIn. Their buying team were looking for something new that could invigorate beer sales. Beer overall is a declining category but foreign beers have been on the rise. Wrexham could engage with consumers, not just around the football club and the celebrity, but also the history of the brand. Wrexham was served on the Titanic and Americans engage with the Titanic story. They ended up listing it in all their stores and over the Christmas period it was one of their best sellers.

How did Red Dragon get involved? 

We needed more investment because to build in America and build in other markets we needed cash and that was the only way we could do it. And that turned out to be Ryan’s group. And for them, it makes sense because it means that they have control over anything to do with Wrexham. Our beer was it was only the brand that had Wrexham as a name. It’s all about positive image transfer and community engagement and it works for both sides.

When you were marketing Tsingtao you went for table tennis 

Only at the start. By default, with a beer brand people will think China and think table tennis. So that’s why we got involved in the Dunlop Masters at the Albert Hall. But eventually we went more underground by doing a thing called Ping Pong Fight Club which just targeted companies bringing a team along to an undisclosed venue to have a table tennis tournament. In the meantime, we moved in a very different direction, with a five-year deal sponsoring a team in British Superbikes. We got TV coverage. and activation within all the 13 racetracks around the UK and activating around the pubs. Activation is so important. What happens pre, during and post the event is key. A big mistake a lot of brands make in my opinion is they sponsor an event and then forget to put a budget together to activate it. Normally if you’re paying X, you have to use exactly the same amount of cash to activate. And a lot of brands become unstuck because they sponsor an event and then expect it just to happen. 

We are in world that has become so centred around digital, has this fundamentally changed your thinking about what you do or is it just part of the media picture?

As in other areas like the news, consumers now are getting mixed messages or not getting the true fact about brands and products. It’s a bit more challenging to make sure that your messaging is clear. That’s why I still believe in some of communications channel like TV or radio. Activating on the ground is still important. Brand ambassadors are still important. People want to see reality and sports events give you that but I haven’t got the answers to where everything is going. I just know that I’m seeing a lot of marketing agencies struggling because AI is chipping into the way they work and a lot of creative is going inhouse at the companies that were their clients in order to save money. I have no problem saying that I think a lot of people now are settling for mediocre rather than excellent because AI is quicker to turn around and cuts costs. Just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s good.

You’ve worked for Red Bull and Corona and launched Crabbie’s Ginger Beer and re-launched Lamb’s Navy Rum. 

Don’t forget building a whisky distillery in Wales.

That too. There are so many balls to juggle in building a brand, where do you need to focus your attention?

I always focus on the objective of the brand strategically and then what are you going to do tactically to achieve your aims. The biggest and most important question is why are you sponsoring something? Sometimes a sponsorship is not really about building a brand in a market, it’s about generating cash from a market. And the sponsorship might not even be targeted in the market where you’re doing it. StōK coffee sponsors Wrexham AFC but it’s not even available in the UK. They want visibility in the US. 

We are in world that has become so centred around digital, has this fundamentally changed your thinking about what you do or are things like soclal just part of the media picture?

Just like with the news, consumers now are getting mixed messages or not getting the true facts about brands and products. It’s a more challenging to make sure that your messaging is clear. That’s why I still believe in some of communications channel like TV or radio. Activating on the ground is still important. Brand ambassadors are still important. People want to see reality and sports events give you that but I haven’t got the answers to where everything is going. I just know that I’m seeing a lot of marketing agencies struggling because AI is chipping into the way they work and companies are taking creative in-house to save money. I have no problem saying that I think a lot of people now are settling for mediocre rather than excellent because AI is quicker and cuts costs. Just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s good.

How do you manage to cope with such a fast-changing business environment?

I like challenges. I’ve always gone through life where someone gives me an interesting challenge and then I do it. Somebody once bet me I couldn’t distill the highest gin in the UK. We did it at the top of Snowdonia and it cost us two and a half grand to do the whole thing and we won the best low-budget campaign across all media channels. I’ve worked in quite a lot of markets from China to Australia and I’ve been involved in everything from manufacturing through distribution to sales. But I’m a salesman at heart. Bigger brands can get so entrenched in the data that they forget about the importance of talking to people. What I’m good at is going into a business and identifying the gaps and seeing how new opportunities can be potentially funded or not. I’m very commercial around making those assessments.