The Bar started life as just a recipe website. Traffic was low and the content rarely updated or changed. The brief was to evolve thebar.com to become a trusted brand for drink recipe content, products, and more–and in doing so, help Diageo achieve their goals of connecting branded content to commerce. With a portfolio of impressive brands and a network of drink experts (their Cocktailists), we developed connected content and commerce experiences that attracted consumers, nurtured the brand’s relationship with them, and kept them inspired throughout the purchase journey—all wrapped up in a fresh new visual identity that has launched the brand across 10 markets.

We have transformed The Bar from a sleepy legacy website into a rich, digitally native brand, uniquely created for the omni-channel experience. Everything is based around a core theme of making drinking at home an experience that’s on par with going out to a bar. Our audience are thirsty for knowledge, they’re looking for ideas and recommendations from experts—so we have a team of mixologist influencers. Our target audience is broad, from Gen Z and Millennials, mums, dads and amateur mixologists. We’re also talking to people who are hosting at home (they want to bring a group of friends together and are focused on the details) as well as gift buyers and even those who just like to splurge on experiences.

We developed The Bar into a digital first brand, with accessibility at the heart of our visual language. We created a bold and confident identity, with a new logo was inspired by the physical location of The Bar in Soho, London. The area was sold to a local brewer in 1536, so we took our visual cues from revival typefaces of 16th century letterforms. We created a design system, toolkit and global photoshoot that has scaled into 10 markets. The theme that acted as a backdrop to our approach was to communicate ‘real life’ situations and ‘perfect imperfection’. This has been applied across multiple channels including websites, social campaigns, packaging, wrapping paper, gift tags, postcards, retail store signage, and more. Our colour palette takes its cues from the seasons: lighter tones to reflect the brighter, warmer months and darker tones for cosier evenings and festivities.

We went from a pilot in the UK, to live in 10 markets: GB, USA, India, Brazil, Kenya, Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia, Panama, Australia. The aggregated results following the new brand being in market for 6 months were:

• Conversion jumped by 200%

• Average orders increased by 40%

• Website sessions grew by 77%

• Revenue rocketed by 864%