Empowering shoppers to transform their meals with Diageo’s Best When Paired Programming
As an ACD across this business, I worked with Diageo to create a platform based around pairing spirits with meals. Using client data and a focused strategy around key occasions, the team and I navigated the complex task of developing creative for multiple different portfolios of brands, recipes, pairings, and settings.
Honing in on the Creative Direction
Our original 3 creative territories are a strategic way to get alignment from clients on what they want, but don’t always know how to say. In the end we wound up using a combination (or, a designer’s favorite word to hear, Frankenstein). The client was attracted to the first build’s focus on simplicity, the second build’s visual direction, and the third build’s tie to “every cuisine” and solving for indecisiveness.
Curating for the Shopper, the Clients, and the 14 Brands
For brevity’s sake, I’ve only included a handful of slides. Every brand involved had their own team, and many with their own agencies, so curating the settings, materials, and recipes were a balancing act across all 14 brands. Part of my role as an ACD is sitting at these crossroads, driving meaningful design and creative decisions that appease all parties. I also traveled to Louisville, Kentucky to help direct and oversee the initial portion of the photoshoot.
Photography & Design, disciplines that are Best When Paired
The final territory and copy line was “Best When Paired”. With new photographic assets in hand from Hawthorne, we set out to build a complete suite of assets including: key visuals for every brand (and multi-brand) with corresponding recipes, a recipe necker, a digital portal for recipes accessible by QR, print assets for retail, and a suite of digital assets brand teams could deploy as needed across social and paid media.
Client - Stacy Narowski & Christina Cultice for Diageo
Photographer - Hawthorne Innovations
Client Partner - Kristine Martinek, Jess D'Alessandro
Strategist - Villy Devlioti
Creative Director - Nic Collins
Designers - Marina Barrero, Adriana Vargas, Bryan Karmel