The Brief
How can we help Diageo inspire its employees and connect them to the company’s rich culture, history, and world-class portfolio of brands?
The Solution
Create an immersive interactive experience that takes employees on a journey of learning and brand discovery, empowering them with the knowledge and confidence to become accomplished brand builders.
Background
As the Diageo family grows, it becomes harder to keep up with the scale of what’s on offer and there is a danger of losing sight of the origins and moments in each story that defines the essence of the brand today. Visiting Diageo’s archive in Scotland, and speaking to brand directors to get these insights isn’t possible for everyone.
So, Diageo tasked us with creating a digital experience, where everyone at the company can immerse themselves within the brands to understand how the stories and ideas that have led to today will help shape the Diageo of tomorrow.
In doing so, employees will effortlessly become ambassadors not just for a brand but for Diageo as a whole.
This immersive experience is for all employees, with a focus on new joiners across all disciplines. For the launch, we started with six global brands: Guinness, Smirnoff, Baileys, Gordon’s, Tanqueray and Johnnie Walker. Other brands will be following this summer.
Our approach
In the past, Diageo colleagues would have full immersive days on-site at the archive for a ‘brand dunk’, which would involve learning about the company’s heritage, how it’s changing the landscape, and a taste of its innovative brands.
We wanted to translate the ‘brand dunk’ experience as much as we could in the digital world to give employees an experience that does them and the real archive — all 5,000 square metres of it — justice, giving them a 360-degree immersive tour from the comfort of their home.
The Vault — named so for storing and preserving Diageo’s extensive archive and brand materials – contains evergreen content for brands that fall into certain categories, which we mapped these to six key ‘digital rooms,’ allowing users to explore freely, by brands, or themes.
- Story Lounge: Explore the roots, character, and stories of Diageo’s brands.
- Growth Garden: Discover how Diageo’s brands play a positive role in society.
- Campaign Cinema: Watch an inspiring collection of videos about Diageo’s influential brands and their values.
- Ideas Lab: Find out how insights have sparked innovations that will shape Diageo’s future.
- Brand Library: The files, the facts, the figures for Diageo’s brands.
- Signature Bar: Enjoy the best applications of Diageo’s brands, including signature serves, pours, cocktails, and flavour profiles.
The rooms are designed with the Diageo brand in mind, so that it feels like a quintessentially Diageo experience, while the brand and theme journeys feature quizzes at the end so that users can test their knowledge.
The platform is built with a CMS back-end, allowing additional content and brands to be added and insightful data to be captured, so that we can evaluate and adapt the experience as needed.
Impact
The Vault, which has engaged a predominantly UK audience to date — although there are plans to go global with other languages — has seen an average 30 per cent journey completion rate since launching in February 2022.
The lounge has proven the most popular digital room, with its ‘Let’s invent a drink’ asset for Baileys having the most engagement, demonstrating the pull that discovering the brand’s pioneering past, present, and future has for users.
Thank you for your partnership over the last (many!) months. The Diageo Vault is looking great and has received really positive reviews so far.
Lauren Barr Learning and Development Specialist
