Diageo is one of the world’s largest alcoholic beverage companies, with a portfolio spanning 180 countries and 13 billion-dollar brands.
The Challenge
For heritage brands, tradition is both an asset and a constraint.
Guinness carries more than 300 years of cultural weight - but the world around it is changing fast. With health consciousness reshaping drinking habits, global distribution models under pressure, and younger audiences seeking new kinds of experiences, how can Guinness change with the times without diluting what makes it timeless?
The Spark
Using our Tectonics tool and working closely with Diageo's internal teams, we identified underexplored intersections between consumer behavior, emerging capabilities, and long-term market shifts.
Guinness did not need to become less Guinness to become more relevant; it needed a new way to express the depth, diversity and cultural energy that already existed around it. When aligned with Diageo’s ongoing pursuit of progress, a bigger possibility emerged: Guinness not just as a product brewed in one place and exported to the world, but as a platform for the many voices, communities and cultures that love it all over the world.
The Breakthrough
Guinness Local: a response to rising health awareness, sustainability pressures, and renewed demand for cultural identity.
We reimagined how, where and why beer is made, working with R&D partners to develop micro-brewing technologies and supporting software that could allow brewing to happen within communities.
This created a future in which Guinness could become more local without becoming fragmented, empowering cultural expression, reducing distance and giving markets the ability to create something rooted in their own tastes, rituals and occasions while still belonging unmistakably to Guinness.
The Impact
Our ongoing partnership with Diageo has focused on activating these ideas in priority markets, turning innovation concepts into real-world initiatives and measurable cultural and commercial impact.
At the same time, Guinness has continued to prove that progressive alternatives and new drinking occasions can drive meaningful growth. In Diageo’s FY24 reporting, Guinness delivered 15% organic net sales growth and achieved double-digit growth for seven consecutive halves, while Guinness 0.0 net sales and volume more than doubled in Europe and expanded to more than 1,500 draught outlets in Ireland.
