In October last year, we announced the exciting new partnership lab ‘Fusion by Diageo’, with the ambition of identifying leading innovators to co-develop the next generation of digital products.
After receiving hundreds of applications from trailblazing, innovative brands, Fusion whittled down the applicants to just 17, marking the inaugural cohort of Fusion alumni to embark on the 13-week journey.
The programme is split into two phases:
- Phase One involves broad concept ideation. During this phase, participants gain access to Diageo’s industry expertise and consumer insights, alongside external speakers, and coaching, to help develop consumer-focused, digital concepts. With phase one concluding next week, participants are busy refining the concepts that’ll be pitched to Diageo.
- Those selected for Phase Two will work towards the in-person ‘Demo Day’, where Diageo will select up to five concepts to progress to a post-programme pilot stage.
The theme of the first cohort is ‘Celebrate at Home’, with participants exploring new frontiers in how people unwind, experiment, and entertain in their own spaces. This is a significantly topical theme as consumers around the world increasingly look to recreate out-of-home experiences from their abode, with some of the cohort’s ideas incorporating high levels of personalisation using artificial intelligence, as well as immersive brand discovery and storytelling experiences using mixed reality and digital humans.
