You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. A b NBEV thinks a lot about E s G. Relies on natural resources, as you know, in a big way. No water, no beer. Basically it comes down to and that easily makes the business case for doing what they do. It's incredibly clear. The company has set out a series of sustainability goals for They've got a pricing mechanism that incentivizes
improvement in four key areas. And part of that E s G mission is also smart drinking, which is something we're gonna talk about. John Blood is chief Legal incorporate Affairs Officer at a b n BEV. He's with us right now in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. John, I want to get to everything that that Carol just mentioned.
But given the volatility that we've seen in the markets, given the macroeconomic headwinds that we're seeing here in the US around the world, rising commodity prices, I'm just wondering how somebody in your position as chief legal in corporate Affairs officers officer looks out over the landscape and thinks about the health of the U S consumer, of the global consumer. Everybody just relaxed thing, right, everyone just relaxing.
Just relax and open a beer, you know, Tim, Look, I fill up my gas tank like everyone else, So you know, I feel it and I feel for consumers as well. And one of the great things about the beer category is it's an affordable luxury. You can go out this weekend, you can have a stellar artois, right, you can go in, you can enjoy yourself. The price point is right there. We have a portfolio approach at all different price points, so it's really a great luxury
that you can have in these types of times. I mean, one of the thing that I'm so floored with talking to you and your senior um executive space is that you guys have to understand your supply chaine so well, right, because it just if things don't go well, uh, it just all breaks down. And you also understand the impact of climate change on that supply chain in big way, which is why your sustainability initiatives are really impressive and you've had them in place for a long time. Having
said that, how would you describe your supply chains today? Yeah. For us. If you think about beer, right, for us to take the United States for an example of what we sell in the US is brewed here. We're talking US farmers. We're talking folks in the US making it, distributing it, brewing it, getting it there. So that's but that doesn't mean we're not immune to the world, right, And that doesn't mean that we also look out and say what can we do to plan, what can we
do to get ahead of things? What tools do we have in our toolkit? And because we're a global business, we have a business in China, we have a business in South America, we have a business in Europe. Talking to those folks about what's on the ground is important for us as well. I want to hear about what you're hearing from the farmers on the ground here in the US, because it's been a tough run for farmers with fertilizer prices going up, with severe weather in many
parts of the country shortening this season. What are you hearing from barley farmers, from hops farmers, Yes, so for barley and hops there. This is something that we try to plan out as best as we can. And particularly when you take a look at something like organic right. One of the beers that we have is an organic brew right called organic Pure Gold, which is a michelob Ultra product. And to get someone right to the farmer to come in and say, hey, we want you to
plan organic barley a right, that's gonna take some time. Right, we have to work with them. We have to give them those long term contracts. And we really see ourselves in the industry and you need to look at yourself as part of the whole chain. So we feel for those farmers. We try to give them those contracts to give them the stability going forward to say, particularly the organic side, we're gonna work with you in the long
term so you can transition to that. John, I feel like this is so into some of the conversations we're just talked with Peter Farcy uh, the CEO of sun Power, and just talking about you know, certainly when it comes to trade tensions between the U S and China that impacts certainly the solar industry UM, but I also think about that, you know, what is the responsibility when it
comes to our global supply chains. You guys have just taken the initiatives a lot on your own right to make sure you ensure the stability and purity of those supply chains. What is though, the government role, especially when it comes to things like and I know this isn't your wheelhouse, but whether it's semi conductors or water or or what have you, because some of this becomes like national security issues, and I do wonder is your responsibility.
You know, I'm sure you're dealing with folks in Washington from time to time, so I do under the conversations that are coming out or that need to be have, that we need to be having when it comes to our national supply chains, just coming off of the pandemic. Yeah, well, I love this question because it really hits home that if you think, as a business executive, you're going to solve any of this by yourself, and you're gonna sit in your room and you're gonna get a power point open,
you're gonna plan something out, you're mistaken. You need to work with partnerships. You need to work with your stakeholders. And the first thing to understand is who are your stakeholders. So your stakeholders are national governments, your stakeholders are farmers, Your stakeholders are these consumers. But your stakeholders are the communities as well where you're looking for these supplies to
come out of. So if in fact, you're working with folks who farm in another country, what are you doing with them to make sure that they're planning? How can you give them something as simple as maybe financial literacy. We have a program where we work with a lot of our farmers to say, we want to help you become better farmers. But more importantly, we're not going to teach you that you're going to learn from other farmers
in other countries. You're gonna learn from other our farmers down the street, and we'll put that together so you can understand when the weather changes about what's the best technique. You can share that because at the end of the day, that community is something that can learn from each other, and we can be a vehicle to that. It sounds like to that you're not going to necessarily wait for government to do all the things. Right. I don't think you can, right. I think you need to partner, but
I don't think you can wait. And by the way, you know, waiting for me right, Sometimes right, you wait and you sort of look at something. But when it comes to things like supply chain activity, right planning, but more importantly, talking right, talking to people, reaching out to those stakeholders is key. All right, I know you came in to talk about smart drinking, and we're gonna get to that. We're gonna do a little break, do some news,
and then we're gonna come back. We with have a nice chunk of time because this fits into your e s G. The corporate speaking, corporate thinking really over at A b in BEP. So we're gonna come back with John Blood, he's chief Legal and Corporate Affairs officer at A b in BED. I want to get right back to our guest because here in our Interactive Brokers studio is John Blood still with US chief Legal and Corporate
Affairs officered A b in BEV. And we were talking about kind of the industry and what you're seeing in terms of supply chains. But one thing we wanted to get to because you are a company that has really laid out sustainability goals. We talk a lot about e s G getting a reckoning and people wanting transparency as part of e s G. Though you guys think about
safe drinking, talk to us are smart drinking? Talk to us about that and how it fits in because, right, we're living in a world where there are multiple stakeholders and then includes our consumer. Yeah, thanks Karen. When I think about smart drinking, right, when I think about what we do with our product, right, I think about my family. Right,
my kids ride their bikes on the street. Right. I want to make sure that we have the best programs for anti drunk driving, right, I want to make sure that we have the best programs for people to remind them about smart drinking. Really, what we call social norms marketing. This is something where you're not just in the old days of like, hey, we're going to raise awareness, right, that's ten twenty years ago. This is evidence based programs
that give people actionable advice. Now it's simple action, a little advice. It'll be things like hydrate between drinks, have a non alcohol beer with the beer, eat before and while you drink. Simple things like don't drink if you're pregnant, plan to have a ride home. Those are the social norms advertising that's away from drink responsibly. Drink responsibly. We do want people to drink responsibly, but we need more
than that today. You need to be more action orient what prompted that change because drink responsibly is something that I remember going back, you know, decades at this point when it comes to marketing. What changed this to actionable advice? What was that pivotal point? Two things to him. One is the science, right, when we work with academics, they tell us this actionable advice, this social norm advice can
make a difference. And the second is about five years ago, right, we were looking at our programs and we said, we have all these smart drinking programs around the world, and we think they were We've been doing them for years. And then we asked ourselves, does anyone have any data if they work or not? Have we has anyone tested this? And how do you test it? And that's where the process started. We wanted to test it. We wanted to make it evidence based, and by the way, we share
the evidence with all those who want to look. We have a foundation that does it. We work at the academics whoever wants to look and look at it. We test the programs and go with the ones that have the biggest and best impact. What's the biggest piece of advice, you know, for our kids. The guy grew up in a family where older parents. I don't know, like different era, Like there was alcohol in the house and I had my first drink with my parents, you know, at a
relatively young age, for better for worse. But I and I and I am responsible about drinking today. But like, what is how do we approach this with kids? Yeah, and this is a fascinating question because if you take a look at the US and you take a look at the rest of the world, right, there are cultural norms. Right, there are laws as well. Of course we tell kids do not drink. Right when the law says, whatever it is,
that's the law, you need to enforce it. However, right when we deal with alcohol, right, when we deal with what we call these social norms, it's so important right that when we deal with it, we remember that alcohol is often part of the special and beer in particular is part of those meaningful moments in life when someone says, let's grab a beer. Right there in part talking about
the beer, but they're talking about the social connection. Oftentimes, when someone says let's grab a beer, they want to have a meaningful interaction with you, right, They want to have a real conversation, They want to be together and sort of balancing that in the right way is what you really need to talk to everyone about. Right, you need to talk to them about this is how you respect the product. This is how you enjoy the product by treating it the right way. And that's what smart
drinking is all about, reminding people. It's like nudging them right. Social norms also is about some people might think, Oh, on Thursday night, my friends go out and they drink six or seven beers. You know what, when you look at the data, it's not the case, right there, drinking one or two. When you remind people of that, you can then nudge and change the social norms so people behave differently. And that's what social norms is all about.
What about when it comes to drunk driving? Right now, because annhezer Bush has decided to ride campaign has partnered with Uber, and I think back to just my own experience in my twenties, and I lived in the mountains and there was no Uber, there was no lift. There was a huge problem where I lived when it came to drunk driving. Uh, there was this terrible joke that you know, to be a local and veil you needed to have a c L surgery and a D u I,
because then you really lived there. And I wonder how much Uber and lift and ride hilling has changed this because it is so easy to find a ride. You know, it is all about sort of embracing the moment. Right. When technology gives you something that allows you to nudge society towards a healthier pattern, towards a social norm that's positive,
you need to embrace it. And that's why we're so happy with Uber and Mothersn' getting drunk driving right as part of that program of decide to ride, right, saying to folks, you know what, there is a solution, and it's very important to remember to him as well. When we talk about decide to ride, it's not just oh hey, you get a free ride home or you get a discount ride home. It's about the mindset of I'm gonna plan,
I'm gonna plan to ride. And I love your generational approach here because if you talk to the three year olds, right, it's almost instinctual now like, well, no, I'm gonna use uber the why would I take the rid? Why would I do this? And it's a different mindset because I'm a little older than you, Tim, but I remember that attitude even worse. And what social norms about is nudging is changing the way people behave in act and that mindset is super powerful and that's why you see drunk
driving numbers over the last ten years coming down. You know, it's interesting, what do you okay, I'm just this is very random. But like cars making, you know, you can't start the car that you have to blow into like a car, do you think that's a good thing? You know, we a part of this process technology. Think about how transformative it can be, but think about how that could take it to another level. You can't start a car if you blow a certain alcohol level. Like, how do
you guys feel about something like that? So when you see about the powers of technology right now, we've seen some research on everything from when you touch a steering wheel, it will be able to measure your blood alcohol level through your skin to sensors in the car. Look, one thing that we had a B ANDB of love right is embracing technology to solve problems. And man, if we get if we get the right technology to solve it
and we measure everything about there. We talk about all the different elements of privacy rights and all those types of things but that's an exciting and exciting time when technology can really make a jump leap. Wow, that's very exciting. I am like blown away. It's really interesting and I'm I'm optimistic in a world that's very dark that you say, like things are getting better when it comes to like drunk driving. Right, we're seeing statistics some of the work
that you guys are doing. It's making a difference just at about thirty seconds, yeah, you know exactly, and also around the world as well, right, So you know you have the US issues, right, but you know, being able to go to a country and run the first anti drunk driving campaign to have a brand embrace that is really for me the exciting part of being about a global company, and it's amazing that it's the first in some countries, right considering it's certainly been a chronic problem
for a while. So I think this is an important issue. We have so many important issues that are really dominating our world right now. I mean, we talk a lot about opioids, we talk about guns, but let's not forget that the amount of people who lose their lives right still because it's something like drunk drivers. Um, John Blood, thank you for stopping by. We really appreciate it. Next time we're going to do an n A segment's chief Legal Incorporate Affairs officer at a b NBAD fourteen Stanific.
I'm Carol Masster. Have a good and safe evening. This is Bloomberg