Barfly Consulting
Mike Spurling is the Managing Partner at Barfly Consulting, a global strategic consultancy for beverage businesses. Prior to this role, Mike held the title of Managing Partner at The Informer, a consultancy specializing in the international drinks industry. Mike also served as the VP of Marketing at Seagram and held various senior sales and marketing positions at Diageo. Mike's educational background includes a HND in Hotel & Catering from Oxford Brookes University.
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Barfly Consulting
Barfly is a strategic drinks consultancy that helps brands grow. The business has been built around supporting seven primary client needs: 1. Category Analysis - to track current dynamics to unlock volume opportunities 2. Trend Tracking - to monitor what’s hot & the impact on client businesses 3. Brand Analysis - to validate & enhance core & new-to-world brands 4. Drinks Strategies - to create high-volume, ownable signature serves 5. Live Market Testing - to trial innovations to predict future performance 6. Brand Stretch - to uncover true levels of permission & credibility 7. Trade Engagement - to build competitive advantage through trade advocacy All our consultancy services are underpinned with what we call “street intelligence”, thanks to our extensive global network of bartenders, GMs, liquor store managers, pub & bar owners, drinks bloggers & other key influencers. Each one is segmented so that we can handpick, by relevance, for each brief. Our bar professionals deliver multiple benefits: • Opinions based on a contextualised & informed reference point through years of On-Premise experience • Independent & brutally honest feedback • Views based on spending their working lives watching & talking to consumers • Recognition that they offer disproportionate influence over consumers through brand advocacy • Being ‘super consumers’ given their lens on the world from both sides of the bar In each city we also have “Barfly Anchors” – resident drinks industry experts, who live & breathe the city’s drinks scene. They gather street intelligence & feed that insight centrally into Barfly HQ. The blend of thousands of bar professionals around the world with the Barfly Anchor network enables us to provide genuinely independent & specialist consultancy for drinks brands at any life stage. In addition, Barfly uses HD film in many of its core services to bring the street to life in our debriefs, & to both add clarity & help teams share findings with stakeholders.