Smoke Inn Blog
Cigar Culture Interview #1: Amanda Micallef – Part 2
This is part two of our interview with Amanda Micallef, Vice President of Marketing at Micallef Cigars. If you haven’t had a chance to read the first installment, you can check that out here.
SMOKE INN: How the increase in women cigar smokers influenced Micallef as a brand?
MICALLEF: That’s also a great question. I don’t know that I’d say the increase in women cigar smokers has influenced Micallef so much as the change in how women approach all sorts of luxury goods has had some effect. It wasn’t that long ago that people might be surprised to see a woman order bourbon neat or a Scotch whisky. But that has changed even over the last 5-10 years. When Dan [Micallef President, Dan Thompson] and I both came on in official capacities about 3 years ago one of the things we did was to start drilling down on that.
The fact is that women have changed the way we think about what we want access to. It didn’t happen overnight, of course. This has been a long time coming. More and more women are at C-level or higher positions. More women control their budget at the household level than ever before. More women are getting advanced college degrees than every before.
So, women’s access to capital to spend on these things has changed. So has our desire to try things that maybe previously seemed to be solely for men. In part, because we’re doing the jobs mostly only men did 30 years ago. I think cigars are really the last frontier. It’s really one of the very last things that’s considered a “guy thing” or “for the boys”. I don’t think anyone is surprised by a woman CEO anymore or a woman ordering a bourbon neat. But cigars are still somewhat uncharted territory for us.
SMOKE INN: So, women partaking of these things is not so much of a novelty anymore.
MICALLEF: Right. We’ve definitely made progress. There’s always going to be work to be done, but there’s been a clear, clear shift in the last decade and I think cigars are on the tail end of that. But women are changing the way they think about them. So that affects who we think of as a consumer. So we no longer think about consumers only as men. We think about them as men and women. We work to create cigars that will hopefully appeal to men and women.
SMOKE INN: That seems to make more sense than just sort of targeting one gender or the other. It’s just remembering that you’re targeting people who might be interested in cigars and just not excluding women in that assessment.
MICALLEF: Precisely
SMOKE INN: Do you think that the increase in women who are cigar smokers has affected the industry as a whole?
MICALLEF: I do. Even in the 3 years or so that I’ve been actively involved I’ve seen more and more brick-and-mortar shops becoming aware of women coming in and purchasing for themselves and taking a personal interest in cigar smoking. We’re making a concerted effort to be inclusive of women and make them part of the conversation.
When we started that a few years ago we found some people in the industry were very receptive and others were just sort of curious. But that’s changed. More and more people are calling us to say, “we want to do an event that’s really inclusive for women” or perhaps they want to have an hour beforehand that’s a “Cigar 101 for women”.
That sort of thing is happening with so much more frequency than it was just 3 years ago. We’re seeing it everywhere. More women are at events, more women participating in Facebook Groups, coming into the shops.
SMOKE INN: So, retailers are coming to Micallef for advice on marketing to women specifically?
MICALLEF: It’s not so much that, as some others in the industry see what we’re doing. We have a cigar that we release annually on International Women’s Day. The Migdalia Special Edition. It’s a cigar that was built for men and women, but we release it in celebration of strong women.
I also have a cigar journal that’s written for both men and women, but it does take pains to point out women’s involvement in the industry. I think these things are noticed by others in the industry, so if they want to do an event focused on women, then they’ll call us or talk to our sales reps to see if we’d like to do it with them. So, it’s more collaborative.
SMOKE INN: So, they’re seeing that Micallef is savvy when it comes to women and you’re not waiting to see what happen. You’re making things happen.
MICALLEF: We’re hoping to be a big part of leading that conversation, yes.
SMOKE INN: Do you think the industry as a whole is doing a good job of catering to women smokers and innovating for them?
MICALLEF: I think it’s improved a lot. I think initially a lot of the instinct was “let’s build something for women” and that’s a hard thing to do. Part of the appeal is that women are interested in this thing that wasn’t really available to them. If you build something different and say “the regular cigar isn’t for you, here’s a special cigar” then you risk missing the mark. I think the industry is getting away from the idea that it has to be a “women’s cigar”. Instead, we make cigars for people who enjoy cigars, but we’re recognizing that women are part of that audience now.
SMOKE INN: Right, it could be seen as archaic or patronizing just making a “women’s cigar”. It’s like building a car just for women. It sounds like something out of the 1950s.
MICALLEF: That doesn’t seem to be part of the conversation, we’ve come a long way. It’s more like, “this is something that women can enjoy too”
SMOKE INN: So, it’s a lot more subtle. You’re just noting that women are a part of your customer base and taking that into account when you’re blending or designing a product?
MICALLEF: Yes, exactly. Right.
SMOKE INN: The Micallef Ambassadors program seems like one of the unique aspects of your brand. Can you tell us a little about it?
MICALLEF: Dan and I both had different business backgrounds, but we both had experience in building out community groups. We both believe very strongly in if you’re if you’re creating a brand for the long term you want to do it alongside the people that are going to be part of your customer base.
The best possible way to do that is to include them early and often. So, the idea of the ambassador really stems from a desire to have a constant open conversation. There are so many tools now, like social media, that make that so much easier than it used to be. I think we, by far benefit the most in that we have almost 10,000 members and about 5,000 are very active on Facebook. So, I have a 5,000-person board of directors and focus group that I can ask questions to anytime. We get so much information and feedback from them that really does shape the decisions that we make.
I can’t imagine what it would be like trying to make decisions in a vacuum, especially for consumer goods and we never have to because of the ambassadors. The ambassadors play a role in shaping our decisions and they are among the very first people we share news with. They usually know even before we drop a press release, so there’s a lot of trust there. We want them to know. They’ve invested a lot of themselves into our company and we want them to feel that connection and influence and the value they create for us, just as any stakeholder would. In addition to that, we try to create a lot of fun content and contests and things throughout the year.
We didn’t want to whittle away too much of this great conversation, so the remainder of this interview appears in Part 3 next week. You can buy the Micallef Migdalia Special Edition cigar referenced above here in our store.
Read PART THREE here
Smoke Inn is Your Cigar Shop
We hope you enjoyed this second segment of our conversation with Amanda Micallef. In Part Three, we talk about the Micallef Ambassadors program, cigar production and The Great Smoke. And…as always, if you’re local or happen to be visiting South Florida, be sure to reward yourself with a visit to one of the country’s best cigar shops in person. We’d love to see you.
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