For Baileys, the November/December period was the brand’s heartland around the world. In the US this time of year is described as Holiday and in Europe as Christmas or the Festive Period. These terms are interchangeable.

“Don’t Mind if I Baileys”: A platform to compete with cakes as much as cocktails

Reframing our liquid as a real adult treat informed a creative idea that leveraged our product truth to trigger consumption around the world.

1) Creating lick-the-screen-deliciousness: A suite of seasonally-relevant recipe content drove indulgent associations by demonstrating delicious ways to serve Baileys, taking the brand from back of cupboard to part of the rich world of online food & drink recipes.

2) From Holiday Season to Year-round Treat: From St. Patrick’s Day to Easter, Dairy-Free to Decadent Belgian Chocolate, we stepped out of the confines of the Holiday season and playfully reimagined Baileys through indulgent serves served throughout the year.

3) From Comms to Treat Experiences: Finally, a physical manifestation of our strategy brought our lick-the-screen-delicious serves into the real-world through pop-up Baileys Treat Bars in London, Dublin and New York.

Throwing off the Shackles to find a new strategic agenda

When you find yourself at such a creamy nadir, the aggregation of marginal gains won’t cut it. With nothing to lose, we faced some brutal truths about our category, strategy and creative approach.

Three radical reframes unlocked a powerful new space for the brand to play, which we informed with global behavioural, ethnographic and semiotic research.

Radical reframe 1:

From cream liqueur category, to the world of ‘real treats’.

As a category, cream liqueurs were dormant and dusty. Rather than try to change the rules of our category, we changed the category we played in, and embrace the £200bn adult treats category which was growing by double digits YOY.

Radical reframe 2:

From one-off festive blockbuster to millions of triggers to treat.

A 60 second TVC wasn’t going to reframe opinions. So, we developed a media approach that would allow Baileys to reach millions when it mattered most.

Radical reframe 3:

From lofty purpose to product indulgence.

And finally, rather than expect we could win in treating through continuing the lofty purpose communications of old, we focused on our part cake/part booze product truth.

We met all our audacious objectives:

i)We became a shining light internally with Diageio’s CMIO proclaiming “The successes the team have driven through don’t just give us cause for celebration, they give us lessons to apply across our business.”

i)We drove versatility: Baileys is now not just perceived as – but also consumed as – a far more versatile liquid across markets. With 4 week consumption rising significantly across Europe.

ii)Volume sales are up around the world; Spain and the UK saw a 21% uplift, US 10% and Mexico 8.8%.

Iii) The most profitable brand in the portfolio; Baileys now has the highest ROI of any spirit brand both in UK at £4.33 and the US at $2.72.

iii)Breaking the rules: The new strategy also rebuffed Diageo internal belief that ROI would reduce with increased spend. With the US demonstrating that more investment leads to more profit.