Haleon

Diageo launches $1bn cost-cutting programme

Diageo reported net sales of $19.6bn for the year ending June 2026, a 2% decline, while operating profit rose 2%. Its initial 'Accelerate' cost programme delivered $540m in savings, including $230m from advertising, promotions and trade investment driven by reduced development costs, more efficient targeting and "smart media buying." The company has now announced a second cost-reduction plan aiming to save $1bn over the next three years and will incur $1.2bn of restructuring costs ($1.1bn to overhaul its operational framework and $100m for supply-chain changes). CEO Dave Lewis said brands are not for sale and ad spend as a percentage of net sales has fallen from 18% to 16%. Diageo's share price rose about 8% after the announcement.

Lisa Maxwell: Organizations Struggle to Align, Not to Answer

Lisa Maxwell, vice president of B2B marketing at Mastercard and juror on The Drum B2B Awards Industry jury, argues that organizational failure in marketing stems from misalignment between teams solving different problems rather than a lack of answers. She advocates starting marketing work by identifying what audiences need to understand to act, building shared understanding across stakeholders, and investing in stakeholder insight before platform or channel choices. Maxwell says AI can generate information quickly but cannot observe or interpret human behaviour, so the human advantage lies in judgment and interpretation. She also emphasizes that B2B marketing must account for human decision‑making within organisations and highlights curiosity and discernment as key leadership traits for the next generation of marketers.

Balancing Short-Term Sales and Long-Term Growth

An ADWEEK House panel co-hosted with Fetch at Cannes Lions explored how brands can balance immediate sales activation with sustainable customer growth. Panelists including Fetch, Keurig Dr Pepper, Sephora, Bain & Company, WPP Media, Georgia‑Pacific and Haleon discussed strategies such as shifting from campaign-centric work to 'customer optimization,' using incremental ROAS frameworks to prove short-term impact, layering loyalty and gamification into discount events to drive lifetime value, and expanding measurement capabilities (marketing-mix modeling, holistic and predictive analytics). Speakers emphasized aligning teams and data, bringing marketing and sales together, and making measurement more frequent and AI-enabled to predict future outcomes. The session highlighted research that rewards-based introductions increase repeat purchases and recommended using different data approaches for new versus loyal customers.