The Bar

Architecting and building a flexible, reusable platform for its brand marketing and commerce websites, that also strengthens consumer relationships, was the challenge sector-leading drinks giant Diageo set for UNRVLD.

A composable digital technology stack was proposed that could be rolled out for both its multi-brand websites and to individual brands. With Contentful as the headless CMS, supported by Vercel and Shopify, the platform needed to deliver a cleaner, faster and more intuitive web experience and flex to future local requirements.

The most ambitious of the relaunches on the new infrastructure has been for The Bar, its flagship multi-brand digital home that has localised variants for international markets. While it is primarily a content-focused website showcasing products from 50+ brands, Diageo has the option to turn on buy functionality in markets where that is appropriate, leveraging Shopify as the commerce engine.

UNRVLD’s deep technical expertise in implementing Contentful alongside Vercel and Shopify allowed us to validate the proposed architecture for The Bar, with some amendments to ensure it would be fit for purpose. Four markets - plus a Rest of World site - were then chosen for the initial replatform with UNRVLD as Diageo’s implementation and software engineering partner.

Learnings from the first implementations in the UK, Peru, Hungary and Romania have resulted in an enhanced content migration process for subsequent markets. For example, 650 content pages were seamlessly migrated for the Indian site relaunch, as well as many new ones built.

Other localised sites now relaunched include for the USA, Spain and Columbia.

With a fortnightly release schedule, we continued to add new front and back-end functionality at the same time as each country site was migrated. This has included improved back-end experiences for Editors, an Account section, and locale-specific functionality: such as adhering to state-specific rules for the sale of alcohol on the US site.

From immersive brand pages to authority-led editorial content and recipes, The Bar now meets consumers with content that is relevant, inspiring and easy to navigate, and encourages them to develop a direct relationship with the business.

The common platform brings significant cost savings and a reduction in complexity to manage multiple localised websites from a technical perspective, and improved flexibility and control for the site editors in each market.

Diageo has also been able to reuse the same platform architecture across other multi-brand websites and ecommerce stores, including Seedlip Drinks and Malts.com.

Additional markets, more brands, and richer content are all in the plan for the continual evolution of the platform now that it is live as a foundation on which to build continuously improving digital experiences.