A model for ‘distinctive growth’: Inside Diageo’s innovation strategy
Two decades into its premiumisation strategy, Diageo believes a balanced approach to innovation has helped the drinks giant become an “in-culture brand builder”.
Delivering distinctive growth is the goal for drinks giant Diageo, explains chief innovation officer Mark Sandys, whose team is focused on what it takes to make an innovation stick or drive incrementality.
“What we [in innovation] don’t want to do is just deliver sales as our metric, because actually Diageo is quite good at delivering sales. Our job is to deliver the growth that the rest of the business can’t deliver, because it’s reaching new consumers or new occasions,” he explains.
Inspired by Kantar’s Meaningful Different Salient (MDS) framework, which measures the value of brand equity accumulated in the minds of consumers, the innovation team map out their pipeline according to how different a product or service is for both the customer and Diageo.
