Diageo GB and Coca-Cola Enterprises launch joint campaign

Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) and Diageo GB have unveiled a joint initiative aimed at helping licensees grow sales of spirits with mixers.

Under the "Always Better Together" banner, the initiative sees the two drinks giants pool their respective resources, including a combined sales force of 300 plus and joint marketing spend of £4m, to reach over 10,000 freetrade pubs across the UK.

Through a programme of education and in-pub promotions, the campaign aims to encourage publicans to offer perfect serve drinks to customers every time and in return claims the highmargin category will benefit their bottom lines.

It focusses initially on four key serves - Smirnoff and Coca-Cola, Gordon's and Schweppes tonic, Pimm's and Schweppes lemonade and Bell's and Coca-Cola.

The perfect serve versions of these branded drinks will feature on point-of-sale (POS) material and participating pubs will also be given 12oz co-branded glasses, posters and table-talkers so that pub-goers can see exactly what they are getting. The POS will also include the price for the finished drink, a move the two companies believe will quash the perception among consumers that long mixed drinks are expensive.

Launching the new initiative, Diageo's sales director David Smith and Dave McNulty, the newly-appointed trading director on-premise at CCE, said that trials already carried out in 1,000 pubs had shown that 80 per cent of licensees felt the images on the POS material had helped barstaff achieve a perfect serve and almost seven in 10 pubs said sales were up as a result. They also said the campaign would be followed by more joint initiaitves in the future.

Dave McNulty said: "This is a real opportunity to help licensees unlock profitability in their pubs. We are two busineses with very iconic brands and we can't lie idle and let this part of the pub business decline. The way to turn this around is to focus on the quality of the serve as well as value to the consumer."

David Smith added: "I am as excited about this as I have been about anything in my job for the last 20 years, this is not a one-off promotion this is a partnership forever to unlock the opportunities forever and you can expect to hear more from us in the future."