Sales Operation Manager Trenell Harris talks about his role with big beverage brands like Courvoisier, Maker’s Mark and Jim Beam; marketing trends and tastemaker influence, and being a Renaissance Man.
How did you make it out of Chicago and how do you feel the city made you into the man you are now? – A great mother focus and hard work. Not to mention a lot of luck. My mother believed in discipline and a quality education. She made sure I attended a school she felt would provide me with the education and discipline she grew up, which meant Catholic school. And I worked hard to make sure I stood out with my grades. I’m a very competitive person, so even when it came to grades, I had to be a step better than others. But being a Catholic school kid on the southside of Chicago came with its challenges. All my friends in the neighborhood went to nearby public schools. When you’re the one kid in the hood that goes to Catholic school you get challenged a lot, meaning I had my fair share of confrontations. And at the end of the day I gained their respect.
I understand you have 3 undergraduate degrees and a Masters…how is that possible? What made you want to get 3 degrees? Like I said before, I believe in hard work. Anything I do in life I don’t want to be like everyone else. And honestly it was not my intention to get 3 degrees. But in knew I wanted to go into business, and I don’t trust anyone knowing more information than me. The first major was Management because I wanted to be a sports agent. Then I figured if I have athletes as clients, I need to understand how to market their brand. From there I picked up Marketing as my second major. About a year later the Dean of my business school told me black men fail in Marketing. She instructed me to put Finance on my resume, go to the career center and interview. Sure enough I got an internship in Finance. I came back the following semester and began working on my 3 degree. The master’s degree was out of pure survival. I just got married at the time and walked into a ready-made family. I was not happy with where my career was, and everyone keep telling me in needed my MBA to get further in Corporate America.
I understand you have been in the beverage industry for 20 years. How did get into the beverage industry? Living in Atlanta I wanted to work for the top beverage company in the industry because in my mind they were the blueprint of marketing and knew how build a brand. I spent 13 years at Coca Cola working on significant projects providing me the visibility to understand about market trends, consumer’s needs and forecast our ability to distribute innovate products. With the level of experience at Coke I felt it was time for my career to move into a different direction and a position within Atlanta opened at MillerCoors. Again, I found myself working for another top tier brand but now I was transitioning my skills into the beer industry. Working at MillerCoors I quickly understood the meaning of work hard, play hard. Even on vacation I was required to do some level of work because I supported over 120 in the field. After 3 years I MillerCoors I was burned out doing straight finance work. I wanted to get back to the projects I worked on at Coke. One day I received an email from a former co-worker about a new position at a company called Beam Suntory. I quickly responded to the recruiter and within 2 weeks I was hired. Maybe it’s divine intervention because again I’m working with some of the most recognizable brands like Courvoisier, Basil Hayden, Maker’s Mark and the name on the door Jim Beam.
As an African American man in corporate America, do you feel you had to overcome hurdles to get to where you are now? – There are always hurdles in life when you are trying to provide a better life for you and yours. But yes, I had to overcome many hurdles. Early in my career I was having difficulty getting promoted. For some reason it didn’t seem how hard I worked or those extra projects I did I felt I was hitting roadblocks. I questioned my ability, my knowledge, my speaking tone and even my attire. I believed because I wore suits and ties to work, while others wore business casual, I was looked at as thinking I was better. Then there’s always those voices telling you to “play the game”. Friends and family were telling me to be someone I wasn’t in order to succeed. Coming where I’m from I only knew how to be me. One instance a hiring manager told me someone in my senior leadership called them to blackball me from a position. So yes, over the course of my 20 years in corporate America I have had my share of hurdles to overcome. And you know what, I have hurdles ahead.
Are there many African American’s in the liquor industry? – Unfortunately, there are not many African Americans within the liquor industry. I cannot speak to one specific reason why this is the case, but I do tend to find myself the only African American in the room. It could be because the liquor industry is not known to people. By that I mean people consume the product, but they may not actually think or understand the network that exist to get the product to their lips. Honestly, before I was in the industry, I didn’t think about an actual liquor company who sold the product. Or the distributor who delivered it to the bar I’m at. However, I have seen inroads within the industry of companies becoming more sensitive to their work force. Even outside of African Americans, they are promoting women to higher positions. I would like to think the industry is taking notice to the change in demographics and transitioning their workforce to mimic the market.
Lately you had many appearances in online publications around marketing, trends and multi-culturals, why have people been searching you out for your knowledge on these? – In my 20 years in the beverage industry and working for some historic brands I have been involved in projects and cross functional teams working to ensure our brands stand the test of time. I’m in a unique situation where I cover 13 states across the country. Each has a different make up demographically. From Georgia, to Oklahoma, to North Dakota and Colorado, I must understand how each one of my markets are performing and the key drivers within each one of them. It’s my responsibility to work with my State Managers to enlighten them about their business from an analytical and strategic standpoint. Now consider the states I mentioned. Within those four markets we do not have a consistent top 5 brands simply because of the makeup up demographically of the state. It’s my job to understand not only my markets but the consumers within them.
Is there really a need to market differently towards multi-culturals? – There is absolutely a need to market differently to multicultural consumers. Multicultural consumers are becoming the majority minority. These are our trends setters and tastemakers. This segment touches a point of the market we as an organization cannot, so we need to stay in tuned to their needs and wants. We need to understand their spending habits, where are they socializing, who are they listening to and more importantly what do they think is hot. Pretty much we need to understand the pulse of the multicultural consumer. With the rising populations in both Hispanics and African Americans, not to mention their spending power, it is a must we target them individually so they can understand how our brands fit into their lifestyles.
A few years ago, you wrote a book and developed a web-based tv show. What were they about? – The book in entitled The Silent Voice – Life Lessons through Poetry and the show is called The Colloquy. My book is a collection of poems I’ve written over the course of a 13-year period. Each chapter is a poem along with a life lesson. The premise of the book is the evolution of a relationship from the beginning. As a young man I developed good relationships with the women my older brother and cousins would have, and they would confide in me how they were feeling about how they were treated. I was not that lucky with ladies at the time, so I created these scenarios in my mind what a relationship was like. And because my family was not the most sensitive people for me to share my thoughts with, I found solace in writing. Low and behold I wrote a book and didn’t even know it. The tv show was a visual continuation of the book. I wanted an opportunity to bring men and women together, from different walks of life, and talk. Just talk. My co-host and I would throw out a topic and we would discuss it. What I thought was missing in relationships with communication. I wanted to bring men and women together so we could hear each other out and learn from the other. We could take this as an opportunity to get to know more about the other sex.
What brought on this sense of creativity? – Well they say an individual is either a right brain or left-brain person. I’m unique in the sense I can utilize both. Because my brother was older, I didn’t really have anyone to talk to at home. I began to write short stories to create the world I wanted to live in. I would use people from my class as characters and just build off that. Then I was pretty good in school and math was my favorite subject. So, I have always been using both sides of my brain.
Would you consider yourself a renaissance man? – Indeed. I do not like to be put into one box or characterized as being able to do only one thing. I view a renaissance man as an individual you can introduce into any situation and he will be able to survive, and I’ve been doing that my whole life. I had to live in two worlds going from a Catholic school, majority white, to the southside of Chicago. I’ve had to fight my way through corporate America while remaining true to who I am. I constantly challenge myself to learn about any and everything. In the morning I switch between 3 channels: Morning Joe (politics), Squawk Box (finances) and Sports Center. In the evenings I must switch from being dad to my son’s basketball coach and back to dad. One day I’m working on a project to forecast how our multicultural business will perform in the next couple years and the next day I’m writing about love and relationships. I have built myself into an individual that will survive in any situation and I will excel in whatever I do.
