Case Study: Brown-Forman achieves 1,000-user cloud analytics and measurable promotional ROI with Tableau Software

Brown-Forman transforms marketing strategy, scaling Tableau to 1,000 users on the cloud

Brown‑Forman, one of the largest American‑owned spirits companies (brands include Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve), needed better global visibility into promotional effectiveness, SKU performance and marketing ROI—especially for high‑profile events like the Kentucky Derby. With data spread across a Cloudera Hadoop lake in Azure and teams in 160 countries, the company needed a governed, scalable way to turn that data into actionable insights and coordinate best practices across markets.

Brown‑Forman adopted Tableau’s subscription model (integrated with its Cloudera/Azure stack and Talend ETL) and rapidly scaled to about 1,000 users, while creating an analytics center of excellence with IT as the single source of truth. As a result, marketing now measures promotion ROI, predicts campaign success (including social sentiment and weather impacts at the Derby), improves brand awareness and shipping outcomes, and can flex capacity up or down with lower up‑front investment.

Brown-Forman

Tim Nall

CIO