Francesco Averna - Bitter taste, sweet success
July 2, 2007 - brandchannel.com
While I nursed a strong Sicilian espresso, an old man in a driver’s cap came to the bar and ordered a depth-charge size shot of a thick, blackish drink. I turned away for a sip of coffee and in that time the man downed his drink and already had a foot out the door.
“Amaro,” explained a friend who caught me staring, giving the Italian name for the bitter liqueur that is one of the hallmarks of Italy.
While Frenchmen love a summertime Pastis and the Spanish and Portuguese revel in their sherries and ports, Italians have a taste for the bitter. Made from herbs, spices, zests, and scads of secret ingredients, the drinks tend not to be pounded, but sipped as a digestif at the end of a meal. They enjoy reputations for everything from being cold remedies to helping women with menstrual pains to helping men keep things pointing north in the bedroom. Most of all, it’s a tradition.
It doesn’t tend to be love at first sip. I dove in with a Fernet-Branca—Italy’s favorite amaro—which was not unlike drinking unsweetened homeopathic cold syrup. I coughed and could have sworn my chest hair—all of it—spontaneously grew a quarter inch. Say what you will about digestive drinks being nothing but an excuse to consume a bit more alcohol at the end of the night, but if anything is going to help you process the meal you’ve just eaten, this is the stuff.
“When Italians come up to the bar, I ask if they want dolce or amaro [i.e., sweet or bitter],” says Domenico Randazzo, an award-winning bartender at Sicily’s Palazzolo café and bakery. “Eighty percent say amaro.”
It might have sounded like he was calling me a wimp if I hadn’t started developing a taste for the stuff.
Asked about Sicilian preferences for their favorite amaro and Randazzo doesn’t hesitate: the relatively sweet-flavored Averna brand.
Following his lead, I head to the center of Sicily for the tour of the Averna plant in Caltanissetta. Francesco Averna, who runs the plant with his brother, walks from the offices to the bottling plant, pointing out everything from how they’ve modernized the bottling section in the hundred years they have been in business, to photos from a visit by Pope John Paul II, then wrapping things up quickly at their giant, stainless steel storage vats.
Right at the point where a winemaker would just be warming up, Averna starts walking back toward his office.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says simply, “the rest is a secret.”
“Ah.”
It all smacks of serious marketing fluff until I speak with Sabrina Gianforte, a Sicilian who both runs Confezionando, her family’s fancy-food store in Palermo, and is in charge of her own gastronomic consultancy.
“It’s a testimony to the idea about the way to complete a meal,” she says, sounding like she, too, is on the take, until she adds some history.
“Women in the past had the time to make elaborate food. The man would work the earth—the agriculture and the mines. The woman gave much attention to the house and the family members. She had time to create and invent in the kitchen.” In the 1800s, homemade amaros and a rose-petal liqueur called rosolio were some of their creations.
“Averna (a brand that has been around since 1868) represented Sicilian industry; it was a sign of a growing economy,” she adds. “When a man drank this, it was—and still is—a link to that tradition.”
Tradition or not, counting on this sounds like a lack of change that, from the outside, seems like Francesco Averna is sticking his head in the sand. Mention hip beverages like energy drinks or Jägermeister (actually an amaro, and a competitor here) and it’s clear that he doesn’t wish to be lumped into any semi-trendy set. Luckily, the brand’s numbers (and a little collection of spiffy cars in the parking lot) seem to say it’s doing a good job for a medium-sized company: Averna sells eight million bottles of its amaro per year—a million in Sicily, four million more in the rest of Italy, and another three million around the world.
Just don’t confuse an amaro with bittersweet drinks like Campari, Martini, or Cinzano. These, for Italians are aperitifs—appetite whetters, not the last thing you sip before you stumble home at the end of a good meal.
“It’s rare to drink those without a mixer,” says Averna. “When you mix other products with cola, you can lose the flavor [of what you’re drinking].”
“There is an evolution to our product, not a revolution,” he says—and the furthest he seems comfortable going on this front is suggesting mixing it with ginger ale, which “doesn’t change the taste of the product,” or adding some blood orange juice.
Shooting closer to Averna’s target market is German-made Jägermeister—perhaps the best-known version of amaro outside of Italy, and exactly what the Avernas don’t want to become. Jägermeister’s US website lauds the drink as “the favorite shot of millions” and offers the opportunity to “Battle the Jäger Monster,” become a “Jägerette/Jäger Dude,” or receive a promotional code for Ozzfest 2007, the annual heavy-metal and hard-rock concert.
“The modern lifestyle is too fast and we never have the time to talk with family and friends—we’re always running,” says Averna. “People are searching for something different. If you put Averna at the center of the world, you drink slowly—you talk to each other.
“Jagermeister stands for force and determination,” he adds, clearly aghast by any comparison to his German competitor’s marketing. “Averna should be at the center of a world of pleasure—with family and friends. [Jägermeister’s] position is totally different from the [rest of the] world of amaro.”
Similarly, though mixed drinks made with energy elixirs like Red Bull are certainly on the rise here, there’s little temptation for Averna to reach out to that audience.
“They advertise sex, success, the businessman, speed, the big car,” Averna says, “That’s the opposite of what we’re after.”
“You never change dramatically to sell more. You should remain a link to your world. You can adapt your positioning without becoming another product,” he says.
Or, at the least, if you’re going to get pickled on the stuff, you should do it slowly.
“People are searching for something different. If you put Averna at the center of the world, you drink slowly, you savor, you talk to each other,” says Averna.
“You don’t drink [Averna] like tequila,” he adds, visibly disturbed by the image of the old man in the café downing his amaro in one gulp. “This isn’t the way we’re trying to position ourselves.” Instead, the brand still falls back on its 1985 ad slogan, “Il Gusto Pieno Della Vita”—The Full Taste of Life.
It also sounds like the full taste of a machine that’s fueled on too much hope until Palermo bar owner Pietro Parisi confirms the approach.
“You start drinking amaros after you’re 25 years old,” he says. His bar, Caffe Malavoglia, which attracts late-twenty- to early-thirtysomethings, is a sort of proving ground for Averna’s intentionally laissez-faire style. “Averna doesn’t need to do much marketing,” he says. “It’s one of our top requests. If Averna spends 100,000 euros [US$ 135,000] on marketing, everybody else would have to pay double.
“It’s the first thing you drink at the end of a meal—you have dinner, then a coffee and Averna…buona notte!”
Joe Ray is a food and travel writing specialist based in Europe. He can be reached via his Web site, www.joe-ray.com.