Froggatt describes his stint turning round Cinzano as “torrid years” but agrees they made his career. “I think you have got to have the lashes on your back at some time.”
His executives at S&N can expect more of the same. So far he has concentrated on communicating exactly what he wants and pushing for efficiencies, but those who know him say that, behind the smile, he will already be making calculations about whom he wants to take with him, and whom he wants to replace. He is creating new senior executive positions, including a marketing supremo who will be given a brief to innovate. Much of the beer market has, in Froggatt’s view, been too conservative. Froggatt was part of the team that renovated Smirnoff’s image with Smirnoff Ice — though he never foresaw the alcopop boom. “I was involved in the genesis of it,” he says rather defensively, “but not where it went from there.”
That push for innovation will be part of his mission to “drive value out of the brands” at S&N. Brian Stewart, S&N’s chairman and former chief executive, says Froggatt’s branding nous was just one reason why he was hired.
“Personality, knowledge of international marketing, and energy” were the others, says Stewart. He flew to Australia to woo Froggatt personally. The two come from very different backgrounds — one a Scottish accountant, the other an Aussie marketer — but they clicked. “The chemistry was right,” says Froggatt. “I just felt it.”
So what next? Froggatt is cautious about revealing his hand. Buy more brands? “Never say never but I think we haven’t fully exploited our own brands yet.”
Expand into more countries? “Just plonking flags in countries is not going to give us the scale we require, it’s about how you organise and build on the base you have, about finding the markets and regions that have opportunities for aboveaverage growth.”
One such region is Russia, which has been starved of brands and offers huge potential for growth, and where S&N operates a joint venture with Denmark’s Carlsberg.
How about a full merger with Carlsberg? “We have a very good relationship with Carlsberg, despite being bitterly competitive in virtually every other area.”
Yet most agree that S&N, in its new guise, has to get bigger if it wants to compete with the real beer giants: Anheuser Busch, SAB Miller, Heineken and Interbrew. S&N used the £2.5 billion raised by its recent pub sales to pay down debt. Surely expansion is now a priority, otherwise it is going to be a pretty tasty target itself? Well, if Froggatt is buying, he’s not telling — and at presentations last week, he was stressing that he wants to concentrate on what S&N has already got. Those who have worked closely with him say one shouldn’t underestimate his focus.
“Tony’s a very subtle and effective change agent,” says Mike Spurling, ex-IDV and Seagram, who now runs his own consultancy, The Informer. “People can be seduced by his warm personality, but his vision for business is strong. And Tony can be very tough.”
Froggatt’s ease with people came young, developed during a childhood spent on the hoof in the Far East. Froggatt’s father was a Brit working for Shell, his mother a Tasmanian. He was the eldest of three boys, the most driven “but not the most serious”, who was pushed through a number of posh schools as his father’s job moved him around. He ended up at Geelong Grammar outside Melbourne, then Sutton Valence in Kent. “I was given a bit of a hard time as an Aussie, but I loved it,” he grins.
That sense of rootlessness has always been an asset, enabling him to work happily all over the world, “though I think I always felt Australia was my home”. He read law at London University, partly to please his father who was probably perturbed at his son’s desire to be a rock singer. Law was stifling — “it just wasn’t creative enough for me” — so he took a trainee job at Pye after graduating, and saved enough money to go to business school in New York. From there he joined Gillette, where he learnt the art of selling. “I didn’t realise how bad I was at it until I joined them.”
Gillette sent him to Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Australia. There he joined Heinz, before moving into general management at Swift & Moore, a wine business that was a joint venture between Castlemaine and others. After that, Bull poached him for Cinzano. Froggatt clearly loves the leaping around, though he says he thought long and hard about leaving Sydney this time. But the challenge at S&N was too enticing, and he has kids here. Twice-married, he has three sons in London with his first wife. His second wife will be leaving her job in Australia to join him in Edinburgh next month. For the past six months he has been surviving on his own, working long hours, which has helped him to get his feet under the desk, and set up his new life. That includes a change of hobbies. It used to be collecting old muskets, but, as he has found them increasingly difficult to get through Customs, he has shifted to autographs. “Not Britney Spears,” but antique autographs — Nelson, Wellington, Napoleon, statesmen and generals. Why? He just likes putting things together, he says.
And talking about the S&N job, you can see he is as pleased as punch at what he is putting together there. “This is the culmination of my career,” he says. “It’s everything I want it to be.” He has outstripped his dad, who rose to be boss of Shell Australia, and now he has the chance to build something special.
The hard decisions at S&N have still to be made, but he thinks he has sorted out S&N’s much-publicised supply-chain problems (getting beer to retail customers) and says his top team is terrific. He has already won them over by encouraging late-afternoon beer drinking in head office — Fridays only, of course — persuading his people to get a feel for what customers are buying.
“Pure Tony,” laughs Bull when I tell him. “More power to his elbow, especially when it’s lifting.” Everyone likes Froggatt’s style, it seems, and his products. His dilemma is that he has got to make S&N too big or too profitable for others to swallow, otherwise he could find himself bought out of another job.
