Roux's standard-bearing, yet oddly bittersweet, career of brand management has followed a daunting pattern, an unheard voice seeming to say, "If you build it, they will take it away." He has shepherded the turnarounds of Bombay, and Stolichnaya, which in 1994 came under the marketing and distribution of Carillon, then a division of Grand Metropolitan PLC. Now Carillon is one of the operating divisions of UDV, unit of Diageo, the London-based food, beverage and spirits company born from last year's megamerger for Grand Met and Guinness, and that entity is in the process of folding Carillon into something amorphously bigger. During his 28-year tenure with the company, he has mixed art and marketing while never doing the same thing twice. In his Anbsolut portfolio, he virtually wrote a marketing textbook in spirits advertising. And yet, having made the brands his, he is forced to move on.

While the sale of bombay Sapphire was a government-ordered condition imposed by the U.S. and European authorities for last year's merger of Grand Metropolitan and Guinness, Stolichnaya recently became the target of "portfolio management," also as a result of the Grand Met deal. Diageo has consolidated operations for a number of regional offices including Hartford, Conn., and the New Jersey Carillon division leaving the man and marketer brandless.

At Carillon's helm since 1981, Roux had been the mastermind behind the unique, creative, art-focused print ads for a slew of brands, starting with Absolut. In recent years, he has worked similar magic with Stolichnaya and Bombay, among other Carillon brands that in sum accounted for an estimated $15-20 million marketing budget. While other spirits companies are just beginning to elevate the status of long-standing brands with super premium line extensions, roux helped boost the 12-year old Bombay brand through the introduction of Bombay Sapphire eight years ago.

He took the high road, tapping art-world icons to conceive of high-end imagery for Bombay Sapphire. The distinctive print campaign provided renditions of funky martini glasses holding Bombay Sapphire martinis. The ads positioned the premium brand with the tagline, "Pour something priceless." The martini glass campaign helped generate an upscale image and became the platform for an in-package promotion starting in 1996 that provided a reproduction of one of the ad glasses with a holiday gift pack.

The Bombay campaign was first conceived in 1990, a time when most marketers feared indulgence positioning and heralded instead the Decade of Value, Roux also launched Stolichnaya to new heights with a line of six flavors that were intended to woo younger drinking age consumers.

"When we took on the brand we took on a mission to give it a face-lift," he said. "There was no youth because it was targeted to stodgy purists over 50. We needed to set it apart. We reworked the ads and point of sale but it is not an easy thing to do. It is more difficult to rebuild a brand than it is to build a brand. And the imagery of Sweden was easier than Russia."

Roux's advertising reflected the shift. The first iteration of Stoli ads were entrenched in Proletarian images that softened with each year. But the biggest shift came with the line extension that paralleled Roux's other big flavor hit prior to Stoli, Absolut Citron.

The Stoli line debuted with a little more force featuring strawberry, peach, coffee, vanilla, cinnamon and raspberry. Today the line includes hot-selling Ohranj, which accounts for almost 15% of total case sales, Limonnaya, Pepper and Honey Herb. Still, Roux cautions marketers about line extensions.

"Stoli's line extension was an evolution," Roux said. "We couldn't do today what we are doing today, four years ago. Beyond this line there is great danger with the proliferation of new brands. You see a major brand slowing down and they start to produce everything. That confuses the public and wholesalers. Sometimes a launch makes up for a shortfall somewhere else. But people go ahead and make all these new products at the cost of the company and the industry itself. Sometimes you just have to go back to the garden. There is a tree that was doing well and you plant more and more but maybe it was just the one tree that needed more fertilizer."

For Stoli's line extension Roux realized flavor alone was not enough to pique consumers interest; he wanted to generate word of mouth through the drink meisters that really count---bar owners. Roux is no snake-oil salesman; he knows that in order to sell to consumers, spirits companies first have to win over the folks behind the bars and retail counters. But whether selling to consumers or the distribution network, Roux requires that the products he markets stand on their own merit.

"We are selling imagery, of course," Roux said. "But you have to sell a good product. You are selling comfort and you are selling trust." Relying on a soft sell approach that combined the powers of suggestion and possibility, Roux sent bar owners a six-pack case that included table tents and recipe booklets full of ideas for creative concoctions.

Roux also helped beef up distribution of the products: his affinity for the industry and personable approach to business helped win shelf space from retailers and prime placement behind bars.