Why We Stopped Playing the Traditional Marketing Game (And You Should Too)
Drinks brand marketing needs to move into the 21st century…or at least the 20th for heaven’s sake.
When you see a premium gin advert during the football, or catch a glossy billboard in London, you're watching a brand burn through cash using a playbook that's barely evolved since the 1970s. We know, because some of us have worked for some of those brands.
The Old Playbook (That Everyone Still Uses)
Here's how traditional drinks marketing works, and why it's madness:
1. Hire an expensive agency - £10-30K per month retainer just to tell you what to do:
Buy media everywhere - Because if you're not interrupting people on TV, billboards, Instagram, and radio simultaneously, are you even a real brand?
TV gets nearly half your budget (even though everyone's on their phone during ad breaks)
Out-of-home advertising gets another chunk (people staring at their phones while walking past your billboard)
Digital gets the rest (immediately skipped or blocked)
2. Pay influencers to hold your bottle and say nice things
3. Create "experiences" - Pop-ups, tastings, sponsored events that reach dozens of people for thousands of pounds
4. Pray it works - Because honestly, measuring ROI on most of this is somewhere between difficult and impossible
The Core Assumption (That's Just Wrong)
This approach assumes: broad reach → brand awareness → consideration → sales.
The reality? Modern consumers are scattered across hundreds of channels, actively avoiding ads, and deeply skeptical of brands shouting at them.
The industry's solution?
Shout louder.
Spend more.
Be glad it isn’t your money (yet).
This is Bullshit
We’ve recently watched as a great craft vodka brand spent £3 million on a launch campaign. Beautiful creative. Prime placements. Everything the textbook says to do.
Result? Modest sales, burning cash, and no sustainable way to maintain that spend level.
Meanwhile, we noticed that content creators with a tenth of that budget were building genuine communities of thousands of engaged fans who would buy anything they recommended.
The fact is, they’re solving the wrong problem.
The question isn’t: "How do we get seen by more people?"
It should be: "How do we build something people actually want to pay attention to?”
We know, because some of us are those content creators.
