May Contain Almonds: Bringing Disaronno to the Underground… Almost

Jon Evans is our chief customer officer, and before that our CMO. So it’s no surprise that with his leadership and unparalleled energy and drive, System1 is expanding at an exponential rate. Jon always reaches for the stars… and catches them.

In 2022 Jon stepped up into our chief customer officer role where he’s accountable for all our products, marketing and sales. Jon used to be a System1 customer, so his superpower is a practical understanding of our customers’ needs and challenges, with genuine empathy. He is an experienced commercial leader with a track record of delivering substantial growth across a large number of brands.

His previous experience includes a short stint as CMO for Brewdog; marketing director at Suntory leading some of the UK's most iconic brands; on the board of Purity Soft Drinks, a private equity-backed soft drink business; and working for Britvic Soft Drinks running a 'Seed Brand Unit' in conjunction with Pepsi.

Jon also hosts the ‘Uncensored CMO’ podcast, a mix of work and pleasure and a great way to meet potential clients. It’s at number one in Apple’s marketing category for four countries.

Outside of work, Jon enjoys the freedom of road cycling, “it energises me and I love the social aspect. All my best ideas happen when I am riding my bike..” Jon cycles for fun and fitness, with the occasional competition. He aimed high for his first-ever Time Trial – the Duo Normand – where, thrillingly, he got to compete against pro cyclists. He blended in seamlessly (he hopes) save for the fact he had no team car (!) and has never been so proud to come 257th!

At 28, I was hired as a UK brand manager for Disaronno. At this point in my career, I was feeling optimistic, desperate to learn and get more responsibility. I had never been responsible for a brand or in charge of advertising spend, so I was excited to be given the freedom to go and create.

I was given the budget to bring Disaronno to the people of London. We set up a brand activation to appeal to all senses for commuters on the London Underground and worked with TFL to receive permission.

As people rode down the escalator to the tube, the walls were covered in Disaronno posters, and they were handed mini bottles of the drink at the bottom to sample. Lastly, to include the sense of smell, we planned to waft the scent of almonds through the underground. It was wonderful in theory, but the world had other plans…

The context of world politics at the time is helpful here. It was post 9/11 and the UK and US were debating going to war in the Middle East. The governments warned the public to be vigilant of terrorist attacks during this time. Particularly, the government was concerned about cyanide attacks and advised that cyanide smells like…almonds.

We quickly brought that aspect of the activation to a halt after seeing the warning put out by the government to avoid confusion and panic but not before the media had found out.

Although it went horribly wrong, it was not as bad as I thought it would be.

I feared losing loads of sales, but in fact, sales went up 15%.

The lesson here? There are some things you can’t anticipate. As Charles Swindoll said, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” I never could have anticipated the above would happen and, thankfully, we still went ahead with the rest of the £1.5m pre-Christmas campaign which ended up being discussed on Lorraine Kelly’s show.