• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, January 26, 2024

Hey, “meaningful marketer!” You think hosting “service days,” tithing .5% of profits or claiming “sustainability goals” make you a “brand with a mission?” How about having your CEO and marketing team walk into a gang-run neighborhood to convince these young toughs to come work for you instead of criming? That’s called walking the talk – a perilous one. You can listen to the entire podcast at this link.

The tagline for the Santa Teresa 1796 rum, “Great Rum, Greater Purpose,” is both accurate and well-earned. Baked into this 228-year-old Venezuelan brand is its own Project Alcatraz, a 20-year-old program to recruit and rehabilitate criminal gang members. This is not just another adopted cause. This was grounded in the company's own experience with gang related crime, starting with a holdup of one of their security guards in 2003. Since then, the project claims to have reformed over 400 lives, using the sport of rugby and penitentiary outreach as tools. CEO Alberto Vollmer co-founded Project Alcatraz 20 years ago and is a fifth-generation distiller. As Alberto tells it, this is a story of a company moving beyond its two-century passion for rum into finding its higher purpose.

MediaPost: It's a cluttered brand market, in spirits of all kinds. What are Santa Teresa’s key brand differentiators, and how do you come to market in a different way?

Alberto Vollmer: It is true, it is a cluttered market. The first thing, of course, is we're triple aged rum. We have three different stages of aging in Santa Teresa 1796. It's also the most awarded rum brand in the world right now. We've got over 50 gold medals around the world. We have less than three grams of sugar per bottle, compared to others that are somewhere between 15 and 50 grams. 

And the other thing is that when we started with this campaign, we believe the age of rum has finally arrived, and especially in the US market. Initially it started sort of silently, but basically, it’s the brand that helps us drive or pursue this purpose of transformation of gang members that started with gangs, and then it took us to prisons. And basically, it's to give these individuals to go from being outlaws to citizens and to actually be the individuals that add value to the community. Initially [it is] through producing rum, then some of them have become brand ambassadors, and they tell their story and the story of the brand around the world.

MP: Is there a particular demographic that's embracing rum right now?

Vollmer: We've been focusing on US Hispanics, because they are very active on social media, and I'd say between their 30s and 40s. People that are I'd say cultivated and have an international outlook. I would say, that's more or less the demographics.

MP: But the Santa Teresa brand had been in existence for hundreds of years before you embraced the “Great Rum, Greater Purpose,” mission and I'm curious about the chronology. When did you decide that this was not just going to be a charitable project but very well integrated into the brand where it's actually part of your tagline? 

Vollmer: Back in 2003 to 2005-2006, we needed to spend a lot of time to tackle this. We were sort of like in the epicenter of crime in Venezuela, which at the time was the most dangerous country in the world. We had huge homicide rates. And for us it was tackle this situation or disappear. And we were in the midst of political turmoil also. So, the company was assaulted at this juncture in 2003, and of course you couldn't go to the police, the police were totally corrupt. So, the whole question for us was, how do we solve this situation? Anyway, we solved it by recruiting the gang and giving them an option to pay for their faults with work. And then this, of course, spirals, because then we become very attractive to other gangs that come not searching to assault us, but to find opportunities.

And there we sort of realized that we struck a nerve and then this took a lot of time from me and from members of my team. The Board started saying, so how much time should we be employing on this? How much time is the CEO spending on this project? I remember at the time it was at least 50% of my time. And of course, we were struggling for survival at the time. As we started having this discussion at the board level, one day we realized, so what are we here for? And when you ask that question, why are you here, and you're talking about the country, and you're talking about the company, you're talking about the shareholders.

And the whole thing has to do with making a difference. And I would say that this is where we started to really value the fact that you have an organization, you have a company, you have a brand that can make a big difference in the community. And of course, as you make a bigger footprint in that community that can actually spread further. And that took us then to prisons, took us all around, and finally, at the board level, we realized this was a huge strategic differentiator that the company had, because by this time we have in the community over 2,500 members that that participate in the programs. And now we're in 37 prisons around the country, where we have another 1,000 members that participate. And every single one of these criminals that you can actually convince them to be successful through values and not through short term violence. You actually have an amazing impact, because it's not only the criminal, it's the criminal plus his family.

And so today, the founder of Project Alcatraz, who entered here with guns blazing, is now a career rugby coach. He has 17 rugby coaches that report to him that go to jails on a weekly basis. We're making an amazing impact and difference not only in the local community. Because the other thing that we realize is that if you can have an impact and you can influence those criminal leaders that then go out with a different thought, and where violence is not productive, it does not pay, as a brand you're having huge impact. 

Anyway, the board initially challenged this idea. But as they started realizing the impact and the way it attracted not only gang members, but consumers, press, and everybody at the board level realized this is a huge differentiator. If you're really lucky, you discover your passion. But if you're even luckier than that you can discover your purpose. And that as an individual. But as a company, or as a brand, to be actually stumbling upon your purpose is just a blessing. It's just incredible to actually be able to serve something like that.

MP: I wanted to bring you back to that board because you said that there was some skepticism there, and that some of it was persuading them through results. I'm curious, how did you measure impact? What were the signs telling you that this actually was a cause that was being identified with your brand, and it was doing your brand good?

Vollmer: That's right. Of course, initially, the market to convey the proof truth was Venezuela. At the time we were number three. It was a very successful brand, but we were always fighting with number two and number one, trying to gain market share. And what happened was that as soon as people heard the story, because we didn't come out telling the story, people sort of discovered with the rum and the triple aged, and the fact that it has most prizes in the world. After having done that when they discovered the Project Alcatraz story, suddenly you had people that just became passionate about the brand. And the brand today is not only number one, but also in every single segment of the category, in luxury, super premium, premium, standard, and substandard, in all the segments of the category. We do a survey of brand love twice a year. And today, in the whole category we are number one by far. So, we've got 82 points [out of] 100 in brand love when you compare it to the number two somewhere around the top 60s, like 67-68. That is huge proof of [the] truth.

You'll only get that love when you're admired, when you're respected, when you're you are loved as a brand. Of course, you have to have all the functional benefits. But in the end, you have to have an emotional benefit that is very difficult for your competitors to acquire.

MP: And what's the plan for getting your product differentiation across? Your rum has a much more complicated process from other rums that people are drinking, and yet you still need to make the point with your end consumer. This makes a difference.

Vollmer: Well, the first the first thing was trying to encapsulate that concept of being a triple age rum. Because then people ask, and then you can explain. So that's the first step. And then the media we went into was, of course, Instagram and Facebook. And with social media getting that communication piece out there.

I think in the commercial that we did launch, I would say the feedback I got from consumers that had seen it say they sort of understood really well, even if they didn't understand the details of the triple aged. 

What they wanted to know more of was Project Alcatraz. If you remember, at the end of the commercial you have the piece on the outlaws and how they've become the best rum producers and some of them have become brand ambassadors. And that part everybody's sort of like very curious about. And I think that is probably what we wanted to achieve in this first volley. Because we want people first to understand the product and then what's behind the product. And I think this was the perfect introduction, and especially if you have that curiosity at the end of the commercial, where you have people sort of saying, but I want to know more about this. Well, that might give us a segue in the future to be able to talk a bit more about what's behind the product.