Creative consistency: building brands that endure

01 Oct 2025 Innovation Our Brands Culture Guinness Johnnie Walker Baileys

Jeremy Lindley, Diageo's Global Design Director, explains how, at Diageo, design is about protecting the timeless truths that make our brands distinctive, while evolving them with purpose. By committing to iconic brand codes and using them in fresh, unexpected ways, we create consistency that builds memory, salience, and lasting cultural relevance.

Building brand truths

At Diageo, our brands are built on strong foundations - what I call brand truths. Distinctiveness is the number one thing we strive for across all our work, because it’s what makes a brand instantly recognisable and emotionally resonant. These truths aren’t invented; they’re uncovered by really getting under the skin of a brand’s history, craft and culture.

Protecting brand consistency

From the Guinness harp to Johnnie Walker’s striding man, our job is to protect these truths and express them consistently, whether that’s in packaging, advertisements, content or collaborations. We design entire “brand worlds” – the visual architecture a brand operates in – that act as the glue binding every touchpoint together. This consistency builds memory structures that make a brand easy to spot, easy to choose and impossible to forget. In marketing we call this building mental availability and brand salience.

But there’s a critical twist: consistency doesn’t mean keeping everything the same forever. Lock a brand in place and it risks becoming wallpaper. The goal is always to stay within the “ring of truth” - an idea that feels authentic to the brand’s DNA, is recognisable to consumers, and evolves purposefully to stay relevant.

Protect your icons, but keep them alive

Radical change can feel like the best route, but in my experience creative consistency is most powerful. Brand codes are the keys to our consumers’ memories. Guinness is always a black liquid with a white head. Johnnie Walker’s square bottle, angled label, and striding man are recognition drivers hardwired into how people see the brand.

The starting point is identifying these codes - through qualitative and quantitative insight - to understand the “memory structures” consumers hold and instinctively associate with your brand. Once you know which assets are truly hardwired, you can protect them while finding new ways to express them. The best creativity happens within these boundaries, using familiar elements in unexpected ways.

How we partner with artists

When we partner with an artist we always look for someone with a similar creative ethos to the brand. Fifteen years ago, we worked with artist Jasper Goodall to reimagine the Johnnie Walker striding man in his own style – instantly recognisable, yet completely fresh. Last year, Guinness collaborated with JW Anderson in a partnership that respected our identity while introducing new ideas that resonated with consumers.

Our philosophy in three takeaways

1. Let your consumers lead you: redesigns should only ever be driven by consumer insight, not internal whims.
2. Commit to your icons: protect the codes that drive mental availability and salience.
3. Use them to play in unexpected ways: creativity thrives within defined constraints.

We’ve learned the cost of drifting too far. Years ago, we removed the landscape scene on the Baileys bottle. Consumers didn’t recognise it, sales dropped. We course-corrected by restoring the landscape while modernising details. Put today’s Diageo bottles next to their originals and you’ll see the same core visual elements, refreshed to feel at home in today’s bars and shops, without losing their heritage. Don’t change for change’s sake. Let consumer insight guide you.

Design as a collaborative exercise

At Diageo, design is never done in isolation. We work in a deeply collaborative culture where ideas are developed with global brand teams, markets, and creative partners to ensure our ideas resonate and work across cultures and contexts. When briefing artists or agencies, we start with immersion. We bring them into our archives, brand homes, and live experiences - from the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin to Princes Street in Edinburgh - so they can absorb the brand’s heritage before they create.

But collaboration is only half the story. Every idea is tested against clear metrics. We use tools like Kantar’s Brand Asset Valuator to track the strength of our distinctive assets over time. Every new design or activation is evaluated to ensure it strengthens recognition. Build metrics around your brand’s codes and make testing non-negotiable.

Actionable tips:

Brief beyond words. Let partners experience the brand first-hand.
Clearly define the must-keep brand codes.
Give creative teams freedom within those boundaries.

More tips for design that endures

Use technology to amplify, not replace

We’re exploring how AI can support early-stage ideation, localise campaigns, and speed up packaging innovation. But in premium and luxury categories, human craft and creativity is non-negotiable. People value the detail, care, and artistry that technology can’t replicate.

Think beyond the pack

Design extends into brand worlds and should be able to flex across touchpoints, whether that be in retail, hospitality, partnerships or culture. These worlds influence everything from point-of-sale to social content, and every experience should reinforce the same visual and emotional cues.

Our brand homes are powerful proof: immersive spaces like the Guinness Storehouse and the Johnnie Walker Experience at Princes Street deepen emotional connection, allow us to test new ideas and keep brands culturally relevant.

OUR WAY

Why this matters

In design, the pull towards the new is constant. But timeless brands aren’t built on novelty, they’re built on truths, consistency, and purposeful evolution. If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: know your brand inside out, protect its truths, and evolve it with purpose and consumer insight to stay relevant for the long-term.

At Diageo, our job is to make sure that when someone sees a Guinness pint, a Johnnie Walker bottle, or a Baileys serve, they instantly recognise the brand behind it. Creative consistency is how we preserve our icons, adapt to the times, and keep our brands as distinctive tomorrow as they are today.

Story by Jeremy Lindley
Diageo's Global Design Director