Facebook lands multi-million dollar ad deal

Facebook has landed a multi-million dollar advertsiing deal with alcoholic beverages company Diageo, which owns a diverse portfolio of brands, including Smirnoff and Guiness. According to the Financial Times, the deal is the latest move by the world’s largest social network to strengthen its ties with marketers.

The newspaper states that the deal will see the two companies sharing skills and pooling resources in an attempt to figure out new ways of harnessing the activity of Facebook’s 750-milion or so users. Diageo, the FT says, is especially interested in the large audience Facebook has in emerging markets such as Brazil.

According to a UK marketing blog, Diageo has been working toward a closer relationship with Facebook, ever since research house Nilesen revealed that campaigns for Bailey’s and Sminroff on Facebook had affected offline sales by as much as 20 percent in the US.

“We’ve now said, how can we ramp this up and make it something completely innovative that sets us apart from our competitors,” the FT quoted Kathy Parker, Diageo’s senior vice-president of global marketing and innovation as saying.

“Facebook are working with us to make sure that we are not only fan collecting but that they are actively engaged and driving advocacy for our brands. We are looking for increases in customer engagement and increases in sales and [market] share.”

The newspaper claims that Diageo has committed to spending more than US$10-million on Facebook ads in exchange for consultancy from Facebook to make its campaigns social by design and early access to any forthcoming features.

The paper adds that Andy Fennel, Diageo’s chief marketing officer is set to join Facebook’s “client council” and advisory board made up of marketers from the likes of Coca-Cola and Interpublic’s McCann WorldGroup.

Diageo is one of handful of companies for which Facebook has a dedicated support team. The so called SWAT team draws experts in from the social networking giant’s marketing, research and product engineering groups.

The Financial Times quotes Ankur Singh of London-based agency Techlightenment as saying that Facebook has a chance to prove itself as “one of, if not the branding platform of choice online”.