From "No Longer Cool" to Double-Digit Growth

In this episode of Marketing Factories, a podcast by Effie Europe and REBORRN, Dafni Prosalika (Partner at REBORRN) welcomes Grainne Wafer, Global Category Director Guinness at Diageo, recorded at the Gravity Bar in the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. Grainne has spent over 25 years at the company and leads Guinness end to end, from the billion-dollar brewery investment in Ireland to the marketing that keeps a 267-year-old brand growing at double digits.

Her starting point is disarming: in 2014 a Mintel report told the business that Guinness "simply no longer is cool." What followed was a root-and-branch reset. Guinness broke its own rules, moved to a social-first community model, opened the brand to a younger and more female audience, and turned rituals into recruitment.

Grainne walks through how the turnaround actually got built, from the Welcome Back moment born out of lockdown to Nitrosurge, the at-home device Diageo created after watching super-fans try to get more surge into their pints at home.

The conversation ranges across which consumer trends to back and which to let run, why a declining category is never an excuse, the logic behind partnering with the Premier League, the Diageo Way of Brand Building, and how a global brand keeps a local heartbeat. As ever, the episode closes with the 58-hour challenge: the one problem Grainne would hand the world's best minds.