Hazan Aydin Yesilova has been head of Baileys at Diageo for nearly two years now. In that time, she has led the Diageo-owned brand’s social media strategy in a new direction, from one-off influencer collaborations to a longer-term creator model, deepening relationships, integrating creator content into the media mix and launching its dedicated ‘treat squad’.
During an on-stage interview at MediaCat Live on 18 February, she spoke about balancing consistency with creative freedom, building a scalable influencer strategy and the industry trends shaping how brands and creators work together today.
You changed the way you work with influencers last year and created the ‘treat squad’. Can you talk about the strategy behind that decision and the idea that led to it?
I think it stems from a tension between multi-screen consistency and scalability.
When I first started as a marketeer, it was much easier. You used to have one campaign, and you just put it out on TV. There were limited channels, yes, but also there was less distraction from the channels that you were targeting, and you knew how much of your target audience you reached via those.
But the proliferation of screens in the media has made it harder and harder to cut through the noise. So it becomes really important to cut through, and then that brings it to, how you are going to be distinctive in the message that you share?
The first step was to adapt. What we had for TV was not enough because that was not true to the nature of the media channels that we were using. What is true for TV was not true to Instagram.
The second thing is consistency. We can work with many different influencers, but then how are you going to keep their content true to your brand without diluting their creativity? Because you have to give them creative freedom.
The third thing is, even if you keep it consistent, and even if you only use [influencers] for their organic reach, how are you going to bring scale?
So we have all of these things in mind: How are we going to approach this? How are we going to be consistent? How are we going to be able to reach out to our consumers at scale?
And then we had a brainstorming session with our agencies, and they brought the treat squad idea, which was simply to contract a couple of influencers for a long-term period, getting them into a brand immersion session, getting them to know our brand very well and authentically.
We contracted three influencers as our treat squad, and we got them into brand immersion sessions, and then we put them into our media mix.
So we had foundational assets, simply brand assets that were created by our creative agencies. But then on top of that, to create a full consumer journey, we added this creator content into the mix to get the most out of them. Because if you imagine, especially if you think about the social media channels, the content they create is qualified enough to put in front of our consumers.
How do you brief creators effectively while still giving them space to lead creatively?
First we selected our creators based on how we are defining our community, and for Baileys, it is mainly makers, bakers and shakers [whether they use Baileys as a drink, as part of a recipe, or as a cocktail ingredient]. That informed our decision on the definition of our community.
And when we were working on our creators, we simply decided that we will choose someone who belongs to this ‘maker baker shaker’ community. As a wildcard, we thought ‘let’s try one lifestyle influencer’.
Then we took them into a brand immersion session where we told them about Bailey’s history, what we stand for, what are our values, and what are the key things in our ingredients.
[The creators’ reacted by asking] how can I create better content? How can I make more engaging, more delicious content? They started creating ideas for us, but of course, we have some projects and some messages we want to convey. Then we briefed them, but then that gave us enough space to give them creative freedom so that they can create their own content.
So rather than being a transaction — brief, debrief and then feedback — it was pretty much, ‘This is what we are, this is what we stand for, and then this is what we want to achieve.’ And then they came back with their teams and their contents.
It was a testing and learning year for us. Starting from last July, that was the first year we tried, contracting creators for a longer period and we contracted them for eight months. But on top of that, for each campaign, we also worked with two to three creators that fit with the mood or the vibe that we want to give.
I think next year we will be changing our treat squad because [otherwise] you repeat the same message, and reach the same people. That doesn’t mean we won’t be working with these creators, but I think the treat squad needs to change every now and then.
From a funnel perspective, how does working consistently with creators help you hit your marketing goals?
I think for us, creators definitely work full funnel. If you look at the upper funnel, they pretty much impact and increase the consideration set, especially for their own target audience or people who are engaged with their type of content. But also when we tried it in the conversion, it worked again very well, and the view-through rates or the click-through rates were almost two times higher than what we were seeing with some other content. But again, it’s all about showing the right content to the right target audience.
Have you noticed any trends in how content creators are evolving and what audiences expect from them?
If I look from the marketing perspective, I think there’s almost a bias that people are not watching [long] content, so it all should be six seconds.
But, if you think about the last two weeks. The thing everyone is talking about — unless it was just my algorithm — was Hamnet, a two-hour movie that you have to pay to watch. And then Bad Bunny [the singer who performed at the Super Bowl half-time show], and it was 13 minutes long. Maybe you just saw some memes, the snippets of the video, but again, it all stems from these 13 minutes of video.
So, I think in the influencer space there are different types of content. If you look at TikTok, it is very fast-paced, but then on the other side there are some influencers who we see really engaged throughout the content, making people watch their content, and I think from a brand side, we are more interested in doing that.
I’m not saying the other one is one thing that we shouldn’t use. We definitely should because this is also where people are. But again, if you want to create meaningful stories, I would be more interested in working with the creators who really care about something and create content about something.
It doesn’t have to be an influencer, it can be a dancer, it can be a singer, but if people are interested, they will pay attention and watch.