Responsible Hosting

We believe that targeted preventive actions are an effective way of fighting the harmful use of alcohol and keeping alcohol consumption a safe and enjoyable experience. Pernod Ricard contributes to a variety of responsible drinking programmes throughout the world, through its affiliates and in close collaboration with the industry, civil society, governments and local partners. Originally created in partnership with the Erasmus Student Network, Responsible Party is a project which tackles binge drinking by reducing alcohol-related harm and by raising awareness about responsible consumption among young adults, through online campaigns and on the ground activations. Our Drink More Water initiative, under the umbrella of Responsible Party, has reached 400 million people online and 9 million through on the ground activations during iconic music festivals, carnivals, events, and student parties.

Since 2020, we have also partnered with the United Nation Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) to roll out the Autosobriety programme to educate drivers about the risks of drinking and driving and to help prevent alcohol-related traffic crashes and fatalities. In FY23, the Autosobriety programme was expanded to additional countries, bringing the programme to eight countries in total (South Africa, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, Poland, Cambodia, China, Vietnam).

The Group is committed fighting alcohol misuse at every point of the consumer journey. A new commitment has been formally taken to leverage the creativity of its brands to deliver responsibility messages to consumers through dedicated campaigns.​

Pernod Ricard believes that marketing can be a force for good, creating social value and helping consumers adopt responsible behaviour regarding alcohol. Brands know how to talk to consumers and their campaigns can be an effective way of changing attitudes and making alcohol abuse socially unacceptable.

We are committed to providing quality information to our consumers, advising them when to avoid drinking alcohol, how to consume alcohol responsibly, as well as providing them with the ingredients and the nutritional value of our products.

Pernod Ricard wants to be a champion of the industry commitments taken in Europe and globally with our industry associations.  We want to inform our consumers, on- and off- pack as appropriate, about the nutritional value and ingredients of our products, and we will place an age restriction logo and a logo warning against driving while intoxicated – in addition to the logo warning against drinking while pregnant – in all markets where we distribute our products, provided that it is not restricted by local laws.

We also recently launched a digital label to offer our consumers an efficient solution to their growing demand for more transparency about our products. The e-label will provide information on the health risks associated with alcohol consumption, low risk drinking guidelines specific to each country, the list of ingredients and full nutrition facts as well as other relevant responsible drinking information. In FY23, 41% of our products featured the digital label.

Our employees are the first and best ambassadors for responsible drinking. The Group enlists its employees worldwide with the common goal of reducing the harmful use of alcohol and promoting moderate responsible drinking, both internally and externally.

All our brands must communicate externally with a due sense of ethics and social responsibility, through non-biased, respectful and responsible campaigns which respect everyone and do not target unwanted audiences.

We believe that strong self-regulation is effective in meeting the ethical expectations of consumers and stakeholders in a rapidly changing media landscape. Our Code for Commercial Communications ensures that the Group’s commercial communications do not encourage or condone irresponsible consumption or misuse of any kind. It also contains the Digital Guiding Principles to set the same high standards as traditional marketing.

We want our products to be sold responsibly on digital platforms, and we want to ensure that they’re not sold or delivered to minors or delivered to intoxicated people. 

Pernod Ricard has taken an active role in developing with our industry peers the IARD’s Global Standards for online Alcohol Sales and Delivery. These global safeguards mark the first world coalition to prevent the online sale and delivery of alcohol to underage individuals and to reduce harmful drinking among adults. 

As a responsible host, we want to offer our guests safe experiences when enjoying our products. To this end, we increase internal awareness and rigour in the way we organise our events and brand home visits to offer responsible experiences to our guests.

We are putting in place a “Responsible Host” accreditation scheme to ensure best in class responsible drinking practices in all its brand homes worldwide. We have partnered with the Sustainable Restaurant Association who will be auditing the compliance of our brand homes with the Responsible Host Standards and deliver the Responsible Host Certificate.

We have launched a free ‘Bar World of Tomorrow’ training course in partnership with the Trash collective and the Sustainable Restaurant Association to help develop more sustainable bartending practices. It provides sustainable and responsible tools and support for our on-trade partners, focused around the five Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Respect, Rethink.