Case Study 4: Diageo in Turkey: The Lion’s Milk Versus Global Spirits Deniz Tuncalp and Selcen Ozturkcan Introduction Diageo, one of the world’s spirits giants, acquired a leading Turkish spirits com- pany, Mey Icki Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. (Mey Icki) for $2.11 billion from TPG Capital, a U.S. private-equity firm in 2011 (Jones 2011). The acquisition gave Diageo a large market share (72%), in addition to means of access to a comprehen- sive distribution network in Turkey for its world-known brands, such as Johnnie Walker whisky, Smirnoff vodka and Captain Morgan’s rum in one of the largest and fastest growing nations of Europe. After the completion of the acquisition on 24 August 2011, Andrew Morgan, the president of Diageo Europe (Table 1) and Galip Yorgancioglu, CEO of Mey Icki, got together in a meeting to decide on the post-merger marketing strategy, both in Turkey and abroad. The overall strategy had to consider, both the healthy rakı market, and the potentially huge Scotch market in Turkey, together with growing speciality/ethnic spirits market worldwide. While beer was the largest alcohol category in Turkish market, the aniseed-flavoured rakı—also known as ‘the lion’s milk’ (Cheung 2011)—stood as the main national spirit of Turkey and the leading category in the spirits market. It was produced from the second distillation of “suma” with anise seed in traditional copper stills. From a 70cl “big” rakı bottle, 16 single servings or 8 double servings could be made. Unlike similar drinks, it was not drank as “shots”, Author names are in alphabetical order. Their contribution to the piece should be regarded as equal D. Tuncalp (*) Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: tuncalp@itu.edu.tr S. Ozturkcan Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: selcen.ozturkcan@comm.bau.edu.tr # Springer International Publishing AG 2017 A. Adhikari, S.K. Roy (eds.), Strategic Marketing Cases in Emerging Markets, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51545-8_4 47