Diageo poaches Carat’s Jerry Daykin to be its first head of digital media partnerships

Diageo was among the first advertisers to strike a multimillion advertising deal with Facebook in 2011 when deals like this were scarce. Now, they are something of a formality, with many of the world’s biggest brands masterminding ties that give them access to a plethora of tools, insights and innovations ahead of the wider market. Daykin, who has played a key role in managing partnerships like this for Mondelez, will use that knowledge of those platforms to make them a bigger part of Diageo’s marketing.

Social media is likely to be a big part of how these relationships manifest given Daykin’s work at Mondelez and the fact that Diageo has made no secret of its ambition to double down on these channels. Social and the hope of making Guinness the most popular beer in the world was the impetus behind Diageo’s decision to hire the first digital agency for the stout.

The drinks business also has its eye on Facebook Live as well as how its brands might exist in t he connected home where virtual assistants such as Amazon Echo and Apple’s Siri are tipped to control what and when people are exposed to daily.

None of these innovations will surprise Daykin, who has written extensively for The Drum on topics as wide-ranging as social video to the algorithms that power the way social content is distributed. Recently, he has discussed the fallout from the media transparency debate that was kickstarted earlier this year by Procter & Gamble’s top marketer Marc Pritchard.

Daykin was one of the key marketer’s behind Cadbury’s popular sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympics, with the marketer leading the brand’s social media strategy around the tournament. He worked alongside Cadbury’s digital boss Sonia Carter, who left Mondelez last year, as well as Mondelez’s former digital media director Bonin Bough, with the three working together on the iconic ‘Dunk in the Dunk’ tweet. Following the success of the social media post, Daykin is credited with playing a key role in brokering the deals with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as executives at the company doubled down on the channels once they could see the value real-time content could create for its marketing.

However, at the start of 2014 he left Mondelez albeit to join its media agency Carat where he continued to work with the business. As the account’s global digital director, Daykin had a similar role to what he was doing as Mondelez social media marketing manager but with a pan-European brief. The remit brought him together with Gerry D’Angelo, the media director for Mondelez’s brands in Europe, who left the business to take on a similar role at P&G last year.

Daykin's role expanded beyond the snacks maker, with the marketer going on to work on other brands including Lego, Adidas and Beirsdorf and also led Carat’s relationships with Facebook, Google and Twitter.

The Drum has reached out to Diageo for comment, but the company was unable to respond by the time this article was published.