Diageo: zebra striping tops 2025 trends

Gordon’s owner Diageo has released its Distilled 2025 report, highlighting zebra striping and fandoms as key trends for the year.

The now annual report made its debut last year and recognised neo-hedonism, conscious wellbeing, expanding reality, collective belonging and betterment brands as its five key trends that would shape the way consumers socialise in 2024.

Assessing these trends and how they evolved over the past 12 months has also tied into the foresights behind this year’s predictions.

The report’s data was acquired from the Diageo foresight system, a tool – developed in partnership with data and insight partners Share Creative and Kantar – that monitored and tracked conversations from a range of digital platforms across social media and online.

The system can reach more than 160 million online conversations around the world. The data presented in the report was measured between July 2021 and July 2024.

On introducing a second edition of the report, Cristina Diezhandino, chief marketing officer at Diageo, said: “Distilled 2025 delves into the biggest trends shaping socialising this year – from the rise of the ‘zebra striping’ phenomenon to people worldwide wanting to spend their well-earned money on one incredible experience.

“People socialising goes back thousands of years and by tracking how it evolves, it helps us, and our brands, to stay deeply connected with our consumers.”

For Distilled 2025, the four trends that could dominate the discourse this year were highlighted as: zebra striping, one night only, normalisation of AI, and the power of fandoms.

Zebra striping

‘Zebra striping’ is described as a method of drinking in moderation, where people swap between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages throughout a single social occasion. Diageo said the trend of zebra striping reflected the ‘broader rise’ of conversations around self-care, wellness and slower social interactions.

It reported a 79% year-on-year growth in discussions of ‘decelerated occasions’ and a 37% rise in discussions around ‘celebrating self-love’.

In the UK, 27% of Brits said they have done zebra striping before, making it the most common tool for moderating alcohol intake during social occasions. Meanwhile, in the US, zebra striping was found to have even more prominence with 36% of Americans aged 21 and using zebra striping to moderate their drinking.

Additionally, in the UK and US, Diageo noted the practice trending upwards where in both markets six in 10 people said they were either definitely, or likely to use zebra striping as a way to moderate their alcohol in 2025.

In the UK, 55% of those who have adopted the method in previous years did so more in 2024 than ever before, while in the US that figure was 51% of people.

Starting already this month for Dry January, 44% of Brits and 61% of US adults said they would, or were likely to adopt the strategy. The data was taken from 1,051 adults interviewed online in the US over the age of 21, and 1,025 adults in the UK that were over the age of 18.

Each person profiled had consumed an alcoholic drink within the past four weeks before being surveyed.

Further trends to consider

‘One night only’ is another consumer behaviour Diageo has signalled to watch in its analysis. The idea presents the notion that consumers are happy to spend more time and more on unique products or experiences to create ‘once-in-a-lifetime memories’.

The study showed 5.6 million conversations involved making the most of unique products and events, marking a 83% year-on-year rise.

Moreover, talk about alternative social spaces saw a 42% increase. These include virtual reality gaming lounges, hybrid physical-digital venues and pop-up bars, offering people new ways to connect and socialise.

The influence of AI, which was a top trend last year, continues to rise with speed. Distilled 2025 identified ‘normalisation’ as the next step in the evolution of AI and that it would become more of a trusted aid in navigating daily choices.

The report noted that this was already happening in everyday consumer applications such as fitness apps and digital banking assistants, where ‘the line between digital and physical keeps blurring’. Conversations around AI-enabled relationships are surging across the globe with largest growth in Europe (96%) and North America (91%).

Diageo picked out a few areas where brands can engage with AI in 2025, from using it as an assistant to support human agents (as consumers are shown to still prefer human interaction) to introducing consumers to new experiences beyond their own personal algorithms and considering the use of all-in-one apps.

Lastly, the final trend highlighted was the ‘power of fandoms’, which the report said was about consumers seeking deeper connections in online and offline communities. According to the report, discussions about connecting passionate fandoms have soared by 121%.

Crunching the numbers, 32 million conversations were had on this topic, the highest conservation increase found by the report. Markets such as LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean) and North America were up by 135% and 126% respectively.

Other consumer demand to note in 2025, according to the report, include digital dichotomy, personalised moments, products that ‘offer it all’, experiences that make decision-making easier, deeper connections with brands, nostalgia and hyper-locally produced products.

Looking long-term, Alberto Romano, global futures and culture planning at Diageo, also listed his five key ways ways for Distilled 2025: embrace AI responsibly and authentically; there is a need to transcend the old and new; brands should also embrace the ‘escape the algorithm’ trend; and that we need to acknowledge the transition of traditions and adapt for relevance.

Romano added in the report: “Distilled 2025 has dug deeper into understanding ‘cultural signals’ using supervised machine learning. This has enabled the report to bring to light today’s expressions of each trend.

“Being able to get a deeper understanding of global consumers and the evolution of their tastes is key. Having access to this understanding also enables us to see what issues and ideas brand owners and companies need to keep an eye on over the coming years.”

In other Diageo news, this week the company’s managing director of Great Britain wrote an exclusive op-ed for The Spirits Business to the drinks industry on the ‘challenging reality’ of harmful drinking.

The Spirits Business has also outlined its spirits trends for 2025, and the trends set to dominate the bar world.