Delivering foundation and frameworks for the future of consumer attention.

For Diageo, the world’s largest spirits producer, the primary route of innovation is through its product. Evolving the liquids, formats, and packaging of its spirits drives business growth.

In parallel with its liquid innovation and M&A ventures, Diageo is evolving digital capabilities, partnerships, and processes across its portfolio of brands, and in 2017, partnered with Uncorked to further grow this capability.

Uncorked works together with Diageo’s Culture & Partnerships group as an innovation strategy partner, helping Diageo evaluate, pilot, refine, and share data from startup partnerships, as well as monitoring the changing spirits landscape for opportunities for Diageo and its brands to build competitive advantage.

Through the relationship, Uncorked has built knowledge of the critical success factors for integrating 21st century technology into a CPG business tracing its roots to the 17th, along with an adept understanding of Diageo culture, process, and key business functions.

A key startup partnership can impact many facets of the Diageo business, from supply chain optimization and changing consumer habits to new metrics for consumption and the creative excellence of marketing assets. Uncorked’s job is to help the Culture & Partnerships team give the data coming from emerging partnerships meaning inside broader brand and business roadmaps.

As is to be expected, the precise nature of this work is confidential, but across the partnership, we’ve found new ways for a $16 billion company to upgrade its offense, building bridges between tried-and-true, and experimental, test-then-report ways of working.

Uncorked helped provide us with a foundation and framework for studying how technology can deliver the future of consumer attention for our brands. As marketers of some of the most iconic spirits brands, we'll continue to experiment with new technology and add scale when we see success.

Devin Nagy, Director of Technology and Emerging Platforms, Diageo