Spirits brands know what they don’t know.

Spirits brands know what they don’t know.

Spirits brands know what they don't know. They just ignore the importance of that knowledge. The alcohol business is one of the few businesses that has no visibility on the end user of their products. Due to our three tier tax system, the tax collection and regulatory framework around liquor taxation and distribution, alcohol brands have little contact with their real customers. You know, the ones that drink their products. In our company's years of business, we have never seen a brand pursuing relationships with their end users. Massive resources are spent on retail, mass media, out of home, distributor…
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Alcohol Brands Supporting Restaurants in New Ways

Alcohol Brands Supporting Restaurants in New Ways

It is time for us to see alcohol brands supporting restaurants in new ways. As we move into October, November, December in the alcohol industry or what is commonly known as OND, I've become fascinated by the different ways brands view their marketing priorities. I have been thinking a good deal about the adage, brands are built in the on-premise. I just haven't been seeing this adage play out in real life. Certainly, cocktail, wine, and beer culture are influenced by bar and restaurant placements. I still enjoy discovering a great cocktail at a bar when recommended by a bartender.…
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Bourbon Brand Owner Now Owns His Customers

Bourbon Brand Owner Now Owns His Customers

Bourbon brand owner now owns his customers. Sam is that bourbon brand owner who now owns his customers. Sam thought he owned his brand's customers. He didn't. He owned a relationship with his distributors. He owned a relationship with a portion of his restaurant and retail buyers. Those business owners taking deliveries from the distributors. In fact, he was 2 to 3 degrees away from owning the relationship with the customers who actually swipe a card and pay to drink the product sold by his "resellers". Agencies have been expert at talking brands and pros like Sam into thinking social…
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Jean’s a restaurant owner. She knows what her customer is worth.

Jean’s a restaurant owner. She knows what her customer is worth.

How does she know? There are a lot of factors and variables at play. One of the better write ups on the topic is from Toast. They happen to have considerable data at their disposal. There are numerous factors that contribute to CLV that should be considered before plugging numbers into your restaurant's CLV equation. Jean leveraged her tech to learn the following. Jean's a restaurant owner. She knows what her customer is worth. They are: Average ticket sizeAverage visits per yearAverage party sizeRestaurant profit margin The formula for calculating a restaurant customer lifetime value is as follows: Restaurant CLV…
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Redefining the Brand Ambassador

Redefining the Brand Ambassador

Shared Spirits is redefining the brand ambassador. Eddie Yoon, a prominent consultant in the world of CPG and previously part of Neilson, states this as the subject matter expert on Super Consumers. "Super consumers aren't random oddballs who buy in bulk. They're emotional buyers who base their purchase decisions on their life aspirations." Think about that. As a spirits, wine, or beer brand, would you rather have brand ambassadors out shilling your brand to people they don't know, don't have a relationship with or care about or would you prefer people who have made their love of your product and…
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How Jay’s Vodka gets featured in Nashville restaurants.

How Jay’s Vodka gets featured in Nashville restaurants.

How Jay's vodka gets featured in Nashville restaurants. Jay was curious about the Shared Spirits approach after having been referred to SS by his marketing agency. As we learn more about Jay's brand story, his presence in three states and his distribution, we learn he's knowledgeable about how things work. He was previously a distributor in Texas. He still owns a restaurant in Texas. He knows that the distributor for his brand in a new market needs marketing support that helps his brand stand out. What will provide the distributor's on-premise team the right story to excite them enough to prioritize sharing the brand…
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Marketing attribution for spirits, wine, and beer brands.

Marketing attribution for spirits, wine, and beer brands.

Marketing attribution for spirits, wine, and beer brands is considerably far behind other businesses. I am a fan of Sudipto Ghosh's definition of marketing attribution. The following definition is found this MartechSeries.com article. "Marketing Attribution is defined as the process of attributing the source and their outcomes in terms of ROI of conversions across multiple campaigns at different customer touch-points. Before getting started with attribution, marketers need to identify these touch points. Each touch point will have its marketing attribution model. These models determine how the organization endorses leads generated from campaign touch points."https://martechseries.com/mts-insights/staff-writers/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-marketing-attribution/ Seems fairly clear doesn't it? In most cases, the…
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Angel’s Share will apply to alcohol related investments not just distiller’s barrels.

Angel’s Share will apply to alcohol related investments not just distiller’s barrels.

Angel's Share will apply to alcohol related investments not just distiller's barrels. 4% to 10% of unfinished bourbon in the barrel evaporates away. This is known as the angel's share. $1.25 billion has been invested in alcohol related startups up to October 31st, 2021. Why would I suggest that these investments may not perform as expected or hoped? Let's take a look at some details. Online alcohol sales jumped 234 percent year over year in the early weeks of the pandemic, global data analytics company Nielsen Corp. reported in 2020. Months later, many Americans said they were imbibing 14 percent more…
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Restaurants Lower Customer Acquisition Costs with Shared Spirits

Restaurants Lower Customer Acquisition Costs with Shared Spirits

Restaurants Lower Customer Acquisition Costs with Shared Spirits. In a post by Toast POS titled RESTAURANT CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COST: HOW TO CALCULATE (AND LOWER) IT the company shared a breakdown on how to calculate customer acquisition cost and lower it. Let's look at the core assumptions. The following is directly from the Toast blog. "Because there are so many variables in the customer acquisition cost, there's no one equation that's always used. The closest way to calculate restaurant customer acquisition cost is with this formula: CAC = Marketing Expenses / Total New Customers That may seem simple, but there's a…
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Spirits and wine sampling should deliver relationships

Spirits and wine sampling should deliver relationships

Spirits and wine sampling should deliver relationships. If it doesn't, why not? Over the course of writing this post, we are asking ourselves, and you, some tough questions. As a spirits brand, are you building relationships that do not require distributor personnel? Are you doing anything differently from the competition to enhance relationships with your key on-premise accounts? Doing things better or leading on price is a non-starter. What are you doing that is different? When the marketing people say they know who buys your product, how do they really know? Sure they know the distributors who buy. They know…
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