Diageo plans to step-up their multi-million dollar strategic partnership with Facebook, which will drive unprecedented levels of integration and joint business planning and experimentation between the two companies. The current relationship has seen Diageo enjoy strong return on advertising investment, with an initial study across five key brands in the US* showing a 20% increase in sales as a result of Facebook activity. This 5:1 return has come off the back of Diageo’s brands growing their collective fan base from 3.5 million to 12 million in the past 12 months and Smirnoff becoming the number one beverage alcohol brand on Facebook worldwide.

Building on this collaboration, the new partnership agreement will focus on driving consumer engagement with a particular focus on emerging growth markets. Facebook will provide strategic consultancy to Diageo’s priority brands in its main creation hubs of New York, London, Amsterdam, Dublin, Sao Paulo and Singapore, ensuring the development of consumer participation programmes are social by design. Diageo and its roster of agencies will work closely with Facebook teams from concept development, through campaign creation to execution, ensuring that communities are built at scale and consumer advocacy is truly visible. Recognising the importance of emerging growth markets to Diageo’s business, Facebook has also established local account teams in Brazil and Singapore.

The two companies will work together to push the existing boundaries of social media through co-created experiments leveraging the full capability of the platform. Facebook will also provide metrics to help Diageo define ROI and performance across its priority brands.

Andy Fennell, chief marketing officer, Diageo; “Facebook has been a natural fit for us from day one. Working in such close collaboration will allow us to really maximise consumer participation at scale in our campaigns, particularly in emerging markets.

We are already seeing real value from our work in this space. Over 950 Diageo marketers around the world have now been trained in Facebook boot camps to build their social media capabilities and we are seeing significant returns on investment across a number of brands. We expect this new way of working to deliver even more commercial value for Diageo.”

Carolyn Everson, VP of Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook adds; “Diageo is an ideal partner because we see the world through the same lens – we put people at the center of everything we do. Working closely together has delivered some amazing results and I’m looking forward to bringing to life some of the great things in the works across several of Diageo’s core brands.”