CGA Strategy: Making the numbers count

Since joining CGA Strategy in 2006, chief executive Jon Collins has put the company at the heart of providing and interpreting statistical information for the industry. Phil Mellows reports.

Don't let the smart suit and scouse accent fool you. Jon Collins is master of the universe. The pubs universe, as statisticians call it, at least.

It's a powerful position. When the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) announced last year that pubs were shutting at the rate of more than 50 a week, the figure triggered a wave of publicity about the industry's plight. While loose talk about the "death of the pub" was unhelpful in itself, a process began that pitched pubs towards the centre of the political arena.

Whatever the fate of the Healey plan, the pub is now on the agenda thanks to one shock stat, a number crunched out of a small office in Stockport that caught the imagination and flew all around the world.

Its source was CGA Strategy, the company Collins heads as chief executive. Its power lay not only in the crossing of the 50 pubs mark, but in its robustness, its closeness to the truth. And that comes down to Collins' team's mastery of the pub universe.

"The pub industry is changing all the time, so the trick is to continuously track that universe, the closures and the openings, and update the information," he says.

"For instance, we have access to information on which pubs are being supplied, and if brewers are still delivering to a pub you can assume it's trading. If not, you have to do the research and find out if it's still around.

"Yes, it's accurate," he nods. "Where there used to be various estimates about pub closures, now there's one number, and it's ours."

How it works​

CGA billed 100 companies for its services last year, including all the major drinks brand owners and big pub operators such as Mitchells & Butlers, Punch Taverns, Enterprise Inns and Whitbread, as well as trade associations such as the BBPA.

Its bread and butter lies in giving companies meaningful information about brand performance, which comes, Collins explains, "from understanding the significance and nature of the universe, keeping track of the market you're measuring and adding layers of insight, such as a breakdown by style of outlet or size of business".

It's more useful than straight sales figures because it enables companies to focus their strategy. While CGA accepts no responsibility for that strategy's success, its own recent growth, in both size and influence, probably comes down to Collins' determination to get closer to the industry and better understand and relate to its needs.

When he arrived at CGA four years ago, Collins was already well known in the industry as chief executive of BEDA (the Bar, Entertainment & Dance Association), now known as Noctis, the body representing the nightclub sector.

As a political lobbyist, BEDA had been his client, and he had grown to know and love the bar industry.

"I must have visited every nightclub in the country," he says, and when the chance came to join the organ-isation and move back up north with his new family, crucially within easy reach of Everton FC's ground, he took it.

At the age of just 28, a generation younger than many of his peers, he swiftly became an assertive and knowledgeable voice in the debate around licensing reform, lobbying effectively against the Sunday dancing law before becoming embroiled in the dramas around the 2003 Licensing Act.

"I reckon the history of licensing in this country will make a good next movie for Tim Burton," he says. "The Labour Party came in promising a café culture and 24-hour licensing, and now they're talking about a blanket ban on licences after 3am.

"When Euan Blair, Tony Blair's own 16-year-old son, was found drunk in London's Leicester Square in 2000 it was a big factor in bring-ing the concept of binge-drinking to the fore, which has led to new powers for the police and local authorities and so on.

"And the sheer length of time the transition took meant that between being passed and coming into force, the effect of the 2003 Act had changed."

How he came to leave BEDA for CGA is another curious tale.

"I was diagnosed with kidney cancer in July 2005," he says. "It was a brief scare and I was in the clear by August and now I'm down to annual check-ups. But the time I had to take out of the business made me think about what I wanted to do next.

"Then there was a gap to be a partner at CGA. I had enjoyed con-sultancy work, and I knew CGA had great data. There was the potential to put the two together.

"CGA didn't actively sell themselves enough, I felt. Martin Curren, the founder, took care of the technical side, but it needed something more. You had data for 140,000 pubs, clubs and bars there. My interest was, what do you do with the numbers? What does it mean? Why is it like that? How could that data help an organisation to capitalise on an opportunity? Or mitigate a threat?

"Statistics are my speciality. But I also realise that you've got to put them into the real world. You don't want a 'so what?' reaction.

"That's even more important now that budgets are tight. What we supply has to be relevant. So relevant that it's a must-have."

Revamped and relaunched under Collins, CGA has gone from strength to strength, culminating with the news last August that market research company Nielsen would take an equity share in the company and transfer its UK on-trade service to CGA, offering "the best parts of both services and delivering a new level of accurate four-weekly reporting to the on-trade," Collins said at the time. It's more than numbers, however, in its new guise the company gives as much emphasis to interpreting its statistics for clients as it does to gathering the data itself.

"There were three people on the client-facing side of the business when I started, now there are 22," he says. "And we're recruiting again.

"Now we not only have the data, but we're recognised as an independent specialist in the pub and bar world. We're able to offer opinions and debate the dynamics of the marketplace with clients.

"The dynamics are endlessly fascinating. The record for a presentation, including discussion with the brewer, of one of our quarterly summaries, is three and a half hours. And we had a great time!"

Telling it like it is​

People don't always hear what they want to hear, though. While CGA works very closely with certain clients, it's part of the job, as Collins sees it, to keep telling it like it is. "We can't get compromised," he says.

That was evident when CGA provided stats on drinks pricing for the Office of Fair Trading's latest inquiry into the tie. It was unable to confirm what appeared to some to be the empirical case — that prices were substantially more expensive in tenanted pubs.

"There was not much of a price difference by tenure," says Collins. "But that, for me, reflects the fact that the on-trade industry is complex. Price is also about the offer, the location, the size of the business. There are so many variables you can't really pin tenure to price, it's incredibly difficult to pull out that figure.

"It was the same when we were asked about the impact of the smoking ban. You have to take into account the weather, the market conditions, supermarket promotions. It's the real world and the real world is messy and dirty."

Collins isn't afraid to get dirty, either. He remains executive chairman of Noctis and in January he was appointed vice-chairman of the Institute of Licensing, working with local authority licensing officers and barristers, as well as the industry, to try to make the system work better.

"I've been working with all three today, CGA, Noctis and the institute! I want CGA to be part of this industry. I don't want to just give them (clients) the numbers and walk away."

My kind of pub​

We're blessed with wonderful pubs, clubs and bars in this country. They all offer the opportunity to relax, socialise, chew the fat and enjoy great beer.

"Frames Snooker Club in Wal