Consumers are becoming more deliberate about whether they drink, and yet, paradoxically, remain surprisingly spontaneous about what they drink. One question keeps coming up in our client meetings: has the drinks industry reached the ‘bottom’ and could it start to bounce back? Depending on the category and one's starting point, the past few years have been a tough ride. Our view is that recovery will happen, but it won’t look like previous upward cycles. Some of today’s volume

Successful drinks brands tend to create legends which attribute success to thoughtful planning, logical decision making, timely insights and inspirational leadership. This exercise of joining the dots backwards can feel comforting and flattering for those involved in the success, but often disguise the real reasons why a certain product succeeded where others failed. If success has many vocal parents, far less attention is given to the failures – a classic human characteristi