Diageo Bar Academy gave bar professionals the opportunity to connect with, recognise, and learn from peers globally, through an immersive multi-channel four-week campaign, reaching 36M.
World Bartender Day (WBD) is the only global celebration of bartenders, a highly skilled but often under-appreciated profession. Diageo Bar Academy (DBA)’s World Bartender Day campaign created a platform to recognise and celebrate their work, making them feel valued, inspired, and connected.
As the pandemic ended, bar professionals worked hard to make up lost time — driving recovery of the hospitality industry, and going the extra mile to offer guests the best possible experiences.
Through immersive multi-channel campaigns, DBA showed its appreciation and support, providing the opportunity to connect with, recognise, and learn from peers globally. These campaigns demonstrate DBA’s commitment to advancing the bartending community worldwide – driving long-term benefit for Diageo brands – by:
KPIs targeted reach and community engagement, not short-term commercial results.
We also wanted to drive internal fame for DBA, establishing WBD as a key marketing opportunity for local brand managers, sales teams, and brand ambassadors.
We wanted bartenders to feel recognised, valued, inspired, and connected with peers globally – evidenced by social and in-person interactions, 1:1 nominations of appreciation for colleagues, and highlighting personal successes.
Participation – bartenders immersing themselves online and offline – was key.
A four-week campaign driving user-generated content and peer-to-peer recognition across social media, PR, global and local events.
59% of our audience use Instagram / 45% use Facebook for inspiration. Using these as primary platforms, we drove reach and an immersive experience.
Global online and in-person activations included:
Evenings and weekends are core bar business hours – to make participating easy we:
WBD is an opportunity for any beverage company but only Diageo, through DBA, has the leadership, long-term commitment and scale to fully capitalise on it. (For example, DBA trained 130,000+ bartenders last year; Pernod Ricard’s ‘Bar World of Tomorrow’ has trained 6,500 in total. DBA’s online networks cover 130+ countries).
