Black-tied waiters circled with coconut shrimp and crab cakes while a few dozen guests—mainly men in their twenties and thirties—moved from station to station comparing notes on the Scotch whiskies they were sampling. Bob Littlefield beamed as he circulated through the crowd. But despite the appearance he’d given of taking regular sips, his glass still held the same four ounces poured for him an hour ago. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the taste; he loved it. It was his company’s best-selling product. Tonight, however, he was on the job.
A division president wouldn’t normally be playing host at such a small-scale customer event—Glenmeadie had four of these Tastemakers gatherings planned in each of 25 cities this year alone—but this one happened to coincide with a trip Bob was making to New York. Given that he had just joined the company three months earlier, it was a good opportunity to see his CMO’s marketing approach up close and to take the pulse of a tier of customers he wouldn’t ordinarily interact with. The guests were mostly bartenders from the city’s upscale bars, with a few club owners and liquor distributors mixed in.
Graciously exiting a conversation that threatened to monopolize him, Bob moved toward a group congregated around the blind-tasting table. One of Glenmeadie’s apprentice distillers was there helping guests appreciate the subtleties of different blends and single malts. Working alongside a buyer from a big local distributor, the lad seemed enthusiastic and knowledgeable, if a bit unpolished. Whatever schooling he’d had to get to this point in his career hadn’t been enough to rid him of a pronounced Geordie accent. For a New York crowd, Bob supposed, that was part of the charm.
Some time after eight, as the jazz trio finished its final set and the last of Glenmeadie’s guests filtered out of the room, Paula Laughlin appeared at Bob’s side. She was the marketing director for North America, reporting to CMO Nevin Wallace. As the true force behind the event, she’d been