Festival of Brand Building
Unlocking the power of brands and people for Diageo
The Challenge
Diageo came to us with a vision for an employee focussed internal event with two core objectives:
To supercharge the employee base as advocates for Diageo brands (ie Guinness, Tanqueray, Smirnoff etc), increasing their knowledge and confidence around brand advocacy
To encourage employees to engage with the DWBB (Diageo Way of Brand Building) training
As a global organisation, the event would need to speak to Diageo people across continents, with a mixture of educational and more light/'fun' content to engage with. We were tasked to create an event which local regions/offices could easily adapt to hero their own local front-runner brands.
The Response
Marmalade co-created the biggest ever brand building employee experience that Diageo has undertaken. An all-company global event designed to inspire, celebrate and build pride in Diageo’s amazing brands.
The Brand Building Festival was activated just like a festival, with stages, experiences, merchandise, line-ups, entertainment and content. 30,000 employees were immersed in Diageo’s brands and encouraged to learn how they can grow their own role in brand building.
Our aim? To supercharge Diageo employees with brand building knowhow.
The Work
Marmalade’s first challenge was one of co-ordination across the business - this project involved co-ordinating between many Diageo teams; global communications, marketing, employee engagement, digital, and individual Diageo brand teams to realise the vast size and scale of the festival event and its experiences.
We designed an extensive 'festival' for the event – a festival which would be able to deliver the joyous experience we associate with music festivals, as well as learning experiences. The festival was activated across several fronts:
In office activation – sites were decorated for the festival, and filled with brand related experiences – from brand-led tasting sessions and brand-inspired food stalls, to flower making sessions, games, quizzes and more.
Global live video-led global broadcast, viewed by all offices and supply sites in large watch-parties, as well as online. This broadcast featured Diageo leadership talking about brand building and brand excellence, a piece on the connection of brand building and the Diageo supply chain, a brand-led sizzle reel, and a compilation of global employees talking about what brand building means to them, and how it can be applied across all business roles within Diageo.
An online platform/hub built on Microsoft's Sharepoint, with pages per Diageo brand, promoting the most bold examples of brand building – including commercials, webinars and podcasts.
Over 22 pieces of video content produced
With a further 30+ films contributed by brand teams to be housed on the Festival microsite.
Prioritising digital engagement - the microsite received over 12K visits
A digital platform & hub built on Microsoft Sharepoint, with pages per Diageo brand, promoting the most bold examples of brand building – including commercials, webinars, podcasts and playlists. The hub also included pages per brand, collating brand stories and highlights for specific audiences.
Merchandise
We designed branded festival merchandise including: tshirts, bags, bunting and lanyards; these were adopted globally across Diageo offices, as well as designs being adapted for further branded products: free-standing photo booths, signage and bracelets.
Festival of Brand Building Case Study Film
The Results
PR Week - Festival of Brand Building takes the win for Best Internal Communication and Employee Engagement!
An iconic moment in Diageo history and a testament to this large scale and all-encompassing experience-led event.
The impact didn’t end there:
Activated across over 50 offices and supply sites globally
25,245 employees actively engaged - record levels within Diageo
Hundreds of brand and occasion immersions
Over 12K visits to the Sharepoint microsite
Highest ever attendance recorded at the London Diageo HQ and many other global sites
Diageo Employee Feedback
“Can I just say how amazing the FOBB microsite is on Mosaic! You could get lost in it for hours…”
”The microsite is absolutely crazy!! One of the best I’ve seen, no doubt”
“Such a great reminder of the energy behind our brands. Really looking forward to (delving in and) learning more about how we can bring them to life”
“Thanks to everyone involved in shaping the start of something big – 30,000 brand builders, I absolutely love this and think it can be game changing for Diageo!”
“By far the best activation in my 5 years in Diageo. The measure had redefined global campaigns in October but this was on a complete other level. WOW”
“Nothing has so successfully brought together our different functions, global and local teams”
”Brilliantly executed with energy @100!”
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