Global Head of Buchanan’s Innovation

Buchanan's Global Brand & Innovation Lead

Buchanan's is a top 10 Scotch Whisky that is $1B of RSV. It's an iconic brand that is well-loved with a strong Latin connection and scale across the Americas, as well as being critical to Diageo's overall Whisk(e)y business and ambition.

Buchanan's is at an inflection point and has momentum as part of a complete brand transformation to double the brand over the next 10 years. As part of that journey, we are writing the next chapter of the brand's legacy with a partnership with FIFA as the Official Whisk(e)y of the World Cup 2026, plus an evolved brand platform powered by award-winning talent and new innovation.

The successful candidate will lead the evolution of a winning innovation strategy, creation, and growth driver development including accelerating existing innovation, building an end-to-end portfolio strategy, and shaping the future on new formats, spaces, and launches. As part of the role there will also be opportunities to lead and own other Buchanan's accelerants and have broader impact across other Whisk(e)y Portfolio brands.

The role is a unique opportunity for an all-round brand leader with a proven spike in Innovation to step up and have transformational impact, accelerate recruitment, jumpstart performance, and premiumise the brand in the pursuit of delivering Diageo's Global Whisk(e)y ambition.

Role Responsibilities

• Shape the future of Buchanan's by defining an inspiring innovation vision, mission, and 5-year pipeline for the brand, and drive alignment with key stakeholders.
• Lead the brand portfolio strategy to ensure the most efficient and effective mix across innovation and core variants, focusing on growth drivers and marketing investment.
• Develop and implement plans to accelerate growth on key brand variants, using codified growth levers.
• Create a luxury brand-building model to grow presence in target channels and penetrate high-potential markets.
• Evolve innovation strategy with clear recommendations and plans for new formats, gifting, ready-to-drink products, and other emerging spaces.
• Establish and embed a performance-tracking culture, using monitoring and evaluation to sustain, scale, and pivot innovation efforts where needed.
• Build strong partnerships with regional innovation teams to ensure alignment with global ambitions, share best practices across markets, and unlock brand performance.
• Collaborate with the broader brand team and marketing colleagues to create or leverage culturally relevant creative assets that support innovation growth.
• Work with commercial leaders to develop an innovation commercialization roadmap, optimizing revenue growth and brand value.
• Monitor market trends and competitive activity to enable agile decision-making and respond effectively to opportunities.
• Act as a role model for the brand's desired behaviours and help champion new ways of working within the marketing function.

• Rounded business leader: Minimum 10 years brand marketing experience gained in both market-specific and global/regional roles.
• Range of experiences: The ideal candidate will have a broad range of marketing experience across Consumer Marketing, Shopper Marketing, and/or Luxury, with proven examples of game-changing delivery in Innovation.
• Drive: Highly driven to quickly have a material impact on the business, brand, people, and our consumers.
• Influence: Ability to construct and deliver engaging narratives to build confidence and conviction amongst stakeholders of all levels and across cultures.
• Relationship builder: Highly skilled in fostering effective relationships both internally and externally, in person and remotely.
• Cut through: Evidence of working comfortably in highly ambiguous environments, operating at pace, and balancing multiple priorities.
• Insight: Evidence of using insights to create winning strategies and demonstrate good creative judgement.
• Commercially strong: Commercially astute, bringing a commercial mindset to driving P&L and share performance.
• Entrepreneurial: Ability to "make things happen" and have an outsized impact by thinking outside the box.