Drinks giant Diageo is seeing strong growth in online shopping, with implications that the company expects to impact future growth.

E-commerce, especially through owned channels, has been a steep learning curve for the global drinks company, but now the trends it is spotting in technology and its consumers are shaping the company’s theory of media. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: Diageo spots trends in e-commerce to define its future media model.)

Speaking during Mediatel’s Future of Brands event, the company’s global digital director, Sridhar B, explained what was driving those changes.

Lockdown or no lockdown, people are staying at home more and driving huge booms in e-commerce. Diageo now expects the overwhelming majority of its growth to be driven by e-commerce sales.

Digital transformation also takes new and important steps. For the maker of Guinness, on-trade partners are crucial to the whole company and “even they are beginning to believe in digital transformation and are looking at solutions which can help them grow their businesses”, he said. These are increasingly prevalent measures like contactless menus, kerbside pickup, or online ordering. These offer rich opportunities for a company like Diageo to lend technical heft, but also to find new touchpoints.

Finally, spirits – the company’s largest category – are becoming more premium as people reach for affordable luxury. It is likely, he thinks, that “there will be a growth momentum behind the affordable luxury and our focus is to enable consumers to drink better, and not more.”

Sourced from WARC