Diageo increased awareness for their whisky brands on Amazon in Germany*

In 2020, Diageo was looking to increase awareness for their whisky brands with new customers, outside the whisky category. Using Amazon Advertising insights and planning tools, Diageo discovered that a significant number of shoppers weren’t browsing Diageo whiskies on Amazon.de.

Diageo recognized the opportunity and the need to drive awareness and product discoverability for their whisky brands on Amazon in Germany. In collaboration with their media agency, PHD, and with Amazon Advertising, Diageo created a campaign around gifting for the Christmas holidays, called “The perfect gift”.

Watch the video below to learn more about Diageo’s Perfect gift campaign.

Diageo created a landing page as the campaign’s main destination for existing and new whisky customers on Amazon.de. The page features a shoppable video, in which a bartender from Berlin provides information about different types of whiskies, as well as tips on how to serve the drinks and make cocktails. To surprise and delight customers, Diageo developed a product selector on the landing page. By answering a few simple questions on their preferences and tastes, customers could access a selection of whiskies curated just for them.

Diageo and PHD worked with Amazon Advertising to create a media strategy for the campaign across the customer journey. First, they drove awareness and consideration with placements on the home page of Amazon.de, Fire TV, Fire tablets and IMDb, to help existing and new customers discover the wide range of whiskies in Diageo’s portfolio. Then, they used Amazon DSP to engage audiences wherever they spend their time and extend their reach.

Across the board, the campaign performed above expectations, both in term of awareness and sales. The audience reached by the awareness campaign was made of 80% of new customers.1 A third-party brand uplift study demonstrated an increase of almost 7% in purchase intent and in perception of a high-quality whisky, as well as an increase of over 9% for brands recommendations to a friend.2

“The success of this campaign showed that Amazon is more than a shopping site. Leveraging unique shopping insights, we were able to create a curated approach to engage new customers outside the whisky category, and increase brand awareness. It led us to rethink our media strategy to shift linear TV budget towards Fire TV for future campaigns.”

– Samantha Reader, Marketing Director, Northern Europe, Diageo

*Alcohol ads can only run in the following locales: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Please visit our Creative acceptance policies for requirements that apply to alcohol ads in permitted locales.

1 Amazon internal data, 2020
2 Kantar, Brand uplift study, January 2021