The three critical areas of focus I would like to share with you as we look forward are talent management, social responsibility, and our digital transformation. The most important is obviously to manage our talents: if we are ‘consumer-centric’, we must also be ‘employee-centric.’ Our vision is to make Pernod Ricard the workplace of the future, blending performance and convivialité as our unique differentiating model, by focusing on diversity and inclusion, and striving to simplify our ways of working. The Island, our new home in Paris, is the real-life realisation of our vision for collaborating without silos, promoting well-being, flexibility, agility, and creativity in our working lives. This has also been reflected in our investment in other office locations such as London, with the coming together of Chivas Brothers, Global Travel Retail, PRUK and The Gin Hub.
The second major area of work is that of social responsibility, embodied by our ‘Good Times from a Good Place’ roadmap, and I would like to acknowledge here the work of all our teams on Sustainability & Responsibility. There is real positivity to the progress we have made to date, while recognising that our ambitions and aspirations go much further. Since 2010, we have reduced the carbon emissions of our own operations by 17.5% in absolute value, and we are now committed to reaching net zero in our direct operations by 2030 at the latest and net zero overall by 2050. This involves working with all our supply chain – farmers, suppliers, and partners - to pick up the pace and level of investment in many critical areas as we position ourselves to meet and ideally exceed our goals. I would also like to see us take a pioneering position in regenerative agriculture and in the development of ‘packaging of the future’ within our industry, such as the promising paper bottle initiative developed by Absolut Vodka, in partnership with other industry leaders.
As for responsible consumption, it remains an integral part of everything we do, as shown by the training given last year to our employees, while on the consumer side, we launched a global ‘Drink More… Water’ campaign this summer to raise awareness among young adults. In the same spirit, we confirmed earlier this year that all our products will from now on bear a ‘prohibited for minors’ logo on their labels in addition to the warning labels already in place against drink driving and drinking during pregnancy.
The last area of focus, and certainly the most transformative, is digital acceleration. The consumer is at the heart of our business model and data is nothing more than the digital signature of our consumers and their behaviour. I am not just talking about e-commerce, where our growth rates have exploded. Our ambition is much bigger. In the coming months, we will be presenting our Mission to transform Pernod Ricard into the world’s leading Conviviality Platform Company. We will leverage the power of data and artificial intelligence to unleash the real power of our distribution network and our portfolio, enabling us to get the right product, at the right price, at the right time, to the right consumer, for every occasion, in every market. By offering products and services that are ever more relevant and activating more brands in any given market, we will be able to capitalise on more growth opportunities. This is the Pernod Ricard of the future, and it will undoubtedly accelerate our path to leadership in our industry.
