MUMBAI: Diageo, owner of brands such as Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff, has stitched a multi-million dollar deal with Facebook to drive integration, joint business planning and experimentation between the two companies.

Building on the current ad investment 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 that 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.

Recognising the importance of emerging growth markets to Diageo’s business, Facebook has also established local account teams in Brazil and Singapore. Facebook will also provide metrics to help Diageo define ROI and performance across its priority brands.

Diageo CMO Andy Fennell said, “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.”

Facebook VP of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson added, “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."