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.…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
Sampling Spirits and Wine. A Guide.

Sampling Spirits and Wine. A Guide.

Sampling spirits and wine. A guide. I recently ask a simple question to a marketer of bourbon. "Does the brand care whether or not it has a relationship with the customer who actually drinks its product?" He immediately said yes. They had set aside a boat load of money to work the direct to consumer market. The way this is currently done is via legal shippers and delivery companies. Examples may include Drizzly or some other company that has built methods to compliantly ship. In other conversations I have been asking, how much do you spend to get someone to…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
Sampling as a Service ROI

Sampling as a Service ROI

A wine supplier recently asked us about our Sampling as a Service ROI. We thought it an odd question given the ROI of any supplier spend is largely unmeasured. Ultimately, case counts are the only measure being considered by the spirits and wine industry. However, when you're launching a new category, in our case digital activation, you have to educate people to new language. We're using this post to layout an example of sampling as a service ROI. In the graphic below, you see a table featuring hard metrics, these are measurable metrics. Soft metrics are important and in this…
Read More
How do I make my beverage program more viral?

How do I make my beverage program more viral?

How do I make my beverage program more viral? A VIRAL beverage program? What is this even about? Sprout Social defines viral social media as follows. It's called “going viral” when a piece of content really takes off on social media and reaches a large audience very quickly by receiving an unusual amount of shares and exposure. Whether it's a tweet or an Instagram Reel, many different types of content can go viral. So in traditional terms, a piece of content goes viral when shared in unusually high degrees. The ability to share a purchasable, shareable, and redeemable cocktail, wine, or…
Read More