Baileys was “pretty much tanking” in 2014/15, according to Ben Sutherland, chief digital officer at drinks giant Diageo. But, perhaps counter-intuitively, that gave the liqueur brand some breathing space. “I think what it did was allow a bit of a relaxation on some of the rules around the brand. Because underperforming brands actually probably get less focus than the high performing ones.”
One of the reasons for that lower level of performance was perhaps the over-confidence of the marketing team in what they understood about the brand. “We were really focused on our product, very internally focused, we thought we...