#Interview
NEXT GENERATION PRODUCTS ARE A HUGE
OPPORTUNITY FOR IMPERIAL HERE, SO THE CLA TEAM
IS HEAVILY ENGAGED IN ENSURING SUCCESS
Generation Products are a huge opportunity
for Imperial here, so the CLA team is heavily
engaged in ensuring success.
Tobacco regulation has become tougher over
the past few years in Russia and probably
pretty much everywhere in the world. New
and frequent restricting initiatives certainly
do make your work a lot more complicated
each day. How do you operate in this state of
ambiguity? What are the tools you employ to
stay on top of things and deliver results up to
the business expectations?
Our business meets the demand of adult
consumers of a legal product. Imperial will
always operate within the laws of each market.
We accept that our products must be regulated –
but that regulation needs to be sensible,
practical and proportional. Restrictions on our
industry have been changing for decades, so
the environment in which we operate has been
ambiguous for years. The business has risen
to every challenge by being agile and willing to
adapt – CLA embraces that same attitude. It’s
our job to influence that external environment to
our commercial advantage – it’s also our job to
provide accurate, timely and efficient information
on what might happen. We must also learn and
share with our colleagues in other markets.
Government affairs, reputation management,
and communications cannot be measured
in numbers. What are your indicators of
success?
It’s the role of CLA to both make things
happen as well as to stop things from
happening. To an extent, our indicators
of success can be measured in numbers.
Success in CLA matters can, in fact, have
massive implications in terms of volume,
profit and share. Those are the results that
we need to target, meaning that we can
indicate success. Similarly, we can indicate
in numbers the result of stopping things
from happening. We think of it as protecting
our commercial indicators.
IT IS OUR JOB TO
SHAPE THE EXTERNAL
ENVIRONMENT TO
MAXIMIZE SALES AND
ENSURE SUSTAINABILITY
The Империалист | | 14