Curiosity as Growth Compass

“Our Lost Explorer Mezcal is all about curiosity, seeking inspiration and enjoying the life journey. David and I are both motorbike fanatics and our love of the open road allows us to discover new experiences and cultures. In Mexico, David and I arrived in the agave fields deep in the countryside at dusk with Fortino, a master mezcalero. We decided to produce a special artisanal mezcal together and I remember Fortino showing us where he was going to plant the agaves. As the sun went down, it seemed a magical landscape, deep in the middle of authentic Oaxaca. We tweaked the recipe and came up with a spirit we are really proud of. Our new beverage is about trying new things, being bold and not being afraid to step out of one’s comfort zone to discover what you need to evolve and progress in life. We are advertising The Lost Explorer Mezcal under the tagline ‘Get Lost,’ with a narrative encouraging consumers to find themselves by first getting lost in new adventures. The call is for consumers to live and sip curiously. Mezcal is currently the fastest-growing spirits category in its target markets, and we believe it can replicate what tequila has achieved in the past decade. Mezcal is all about adventure, exploration and discovery, and our target customers are consumers who are naturally more curious. It also epitomises my own journey, since my first business venture was in beverages all those years ago in Russia. It’s all about curiosity – that fundamental human trait that makes us discover the world and keep evolving in life. This is the stated mantra of the company and something that resonates very deeply with me. Curiosity about the world around me is what drives my thirst for new ventures in faraway lands or ground-breaking technology and the adventure that goes with them. Embracing change by venturing into the unknown has become an intrinsic part of my life. It is now tim”

“Branding is a personal passion of mine, dating back all the way to the Bravo venture in St Petersburg, and it felt exciting and invigorating to be essentially building a start-up again. But what should we call our new baby? After discarding an initial notion to use the Play brand, we looked for a similarly dynamic name behind which to build a challenger, customer-centric culture and asked half a dozen marketing agencies to pitch their best ideas. None of them came up with anything that we liked, but another firm which had not been invited to pitch came up with a left-of-field suggestion that resonated with us straight away. Its concept was to brand the challenger around the ‘word-of-mouth’, viral way that we wanted to grow through personal recommendations offering great value and customer-centred service. ‘Word of mouth’ was shortened to WOM and that became our brand. My idea was to build a new Latin American challenger mobile telecoms brand using the playbook of Play in Poland and Nova in Iceland. I could use the same management team and external consultants who worked on both. The partners at Novator responsible for telecoms, who had worked with me since 2010, focused on financing the new venture and acquiring the necessary spectrum and telecoms licences. Chris Bannister, a personable Brit who became Play’s first chief executive in 2005 and had already lived and worked in nine countries, was brought back into the fold as chief executive. And the Icelandic chief technology officer oversaw the technical build-out design, along with his Swedish colleague. Members of our trusted teams from both countries helped in the beginning to transform a failed old-school US telecoms operator into a state-of-the-art ‘kick-ass’ mobile challenger. None of us spoke Spanish and most had never set foot in Latin America before, let alone Chile. It didn’t seem to matter. When we launched, Chile was the most expensive country in the Latin American region in mobile telecommunication, so we saw a market that was fertile for a new approach. Conventional new entrants like Nextel and a venture headed by US telecoms billionaire John Malone had failed to crack the nation. We needed to do things very differently. To achieve the maximum impact and truly disrupt the market, we knew that a key differentiator had to be price. Indeed, we priced our services so aggressively that Chile immediately became the cheapest country in South America for consumer mobile telephony. Alongside this value offer, we promoted WOM as an independent challenger offering honesty and integrity. We set out to be brave, innovative, bold and passionate.”