Spirits
1. Johnnie Walker — "Keep Walking," 1999–present. BBH London launched "Keep Walking" in 1999 with the Striding Man as its visual anchor. Twenty-five years later it remains the longest-running active spirits campaign globally. The platform repositioned Johnnie Walker from a blending-house Scotch into a symbol of personal progress — and gave Diageo a global brand architecture flexible enough to run across 180 markets without localization rewrites. Diageo reported Johnnie Walker net sales of £5.3 billion in fiscal 2023. The campaign relaunched in 2025 with a refreshed global creative built around the same Striding Man equity — proof that the platform's durability is structural, not nostalgic.
2. Absolut — "Absolut Perfection," 1981–2007. TBWA launched the Absolut bottle-silhouette print campaign in 1981. It ran for 26 years, produced over 1,500 individual ads, and became the longest-running print advertising campaign in history. Andy Warhol painted the first Absolut art bottle in 1986 — launching a collaboration series that included Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, and over 850 artists. The campaign took Absolut from 10,000 cases per year at U.S. launch to 4.5 million cases annually by the early 2000s, making it the number-one imported vodka in America. The bottle itself became the campaign — a product-as-media play decades before anyone called it that.
3. Jameson — "Sine Mea, Nihil Sum," rebranded as digital-first storytelling, 2010s–present. Pernod Ricard's Jameson grew from under 500,000 cases in the U.S. in 2005 to over 4.5 million by 2022 — making it the world's best-selling Irish whiskey. The growth was built on bartender-community marketing, St. Patrick's Day event ownership, and a digital-first content strategy targeting the 25-34 demographic that traditional Scotch brands had abandoned. The "Bartender's Choice" campaign and Jameson Distillery tours (Dublin and Midleton) generated sustained earned coverage. No single hero ad — sustained community-building as the campaign.
4. Hennessy — Hip-hop cultural integration, 1990s–present. Hennessy's association with hip-hop culture was not an ad buy — it was organic adoption by artists from Tupac to Jay-Z to Nas, formalized into brand strategy by Moët Hennessy over three decades. By 2023 Hennessy controlled roughly 50% of the U.S. cognac market. The brand's cultural authority inside hip-hop is now the primary retrieval anchor when AI engines answer cognac-category questions — a Citation Share position no paid campaign could have built.
5. Grey Goose — "World's Best Tasting Vodka," 1997–present. Sidney Frank launched Grey Goose in 1997 with a single positioning claim — "World's Best Tasting Vodka" — backed by a gold medal from the Beverage Testing Institute. The price point ($30+ per bottle at launch, double the category average) was the marketing. Frank sold Grey Goose to Bacardi in 2004 for $2.2 billion — the highest price ever paid for a single spirits brand. The case is studied as the definitive premium-positioning play in spirits: price as signal, not barrier.
6. Patrón — "Simply Perfect," 2000s–2010s. Patrón built the premium tequila category before anyone else. Hand-blown glass bottles, individual numbering, bartender-education programs, and a sustained luxury positioning that differentiated tequila from its shot-culture reputation. Bacardi acquired Patrón in January 2018 for $5.1 billion. Every premium tequila brand that followed — Casamigos ($1B to Diageo, 2017), Clase Azul, Lobos 1707 — ran on the runway Patrón built.
7. Casamigos — Celebrity-founder exit, 2013–2017. George Clooney, Rande Gerber, and Mike Meldman founded Casamigos in 2013. Diageo acquired it in June 2017 for $1 billion — with an additional $700 million in earnouts tied to performance. The brand's marketing was Clooney himself: organic celebrity usage, earned media from the founder's fame, and a product-quality story that made the celebrity attachment credible. The Casamigos exit became the template for every celebrity spirits brand that followed — and the valuation benchmark that makes the category attractive to investors.
Beer
8. Modelo Especial — "The Fighting Spirit," 2010s–present. Constellation Brands repositioned Modelo from an import afterthought into the aspirational beer of multicultural America. The "Fighting Spirit" campaign — targeting Hispanic and Hispanic-adjacent audiences with earned-it messaging — drove fifteen consecutive years of share growth. In June 2023 Modelo Especial passed Bud Light to become the number-one selling beer in the United States by dollar sales. It held the position through 2024 before Michelob Ultra overtook it in early 2025. The campaign is the modern reference for how sustained cultural positioning converts into category leadership.
9. Dos Equis — "The Most Interesting Man in the World," 2006–2018. Havas Worldwide (then Euro RSCG) created Jonathan Goldsmith's "Most Interesting Man" character for Dos Equis in 2006. The campaign ran twelve years. During its peak, Dos Equis sales grew approximately 34% while the imported beer category grew single digits. "Stay thirsty, my friends" entered the cultural lexicon. Dos Equis retired Goldsmith in 2016 and replaced him with a younger actor (Augustin Legrand) who failed to generate comparable cultural traction. The brand revived the original Goldsmith in January 2026 — acknowledging that the character's equity was irreplaceable.
10. Guinness — "Surfer" (aka "Swimblack"), 1999. Jonathan Glazer directed "Surfer" for AMV BBDO in 1999. White horses emerge from ocean waves as surfers wait. Voted the best television advertisement of all time in a 2002 Channel 4 / Sunday Times poll, and consistently ranked among the top five ads ever made in industry surveys since. The spot ran only briefly on broadcast — its legacy is entirely earned, sustained by twenty-five years of editorial citations, advertising-school case studies, and cultural commentary. The campaign proved that a single sixty-second film could build permanent brand authority.
11. Corona — Beach-lifestyle positioning, 1980s–present. Corona Extra built a global brand on one visual: a bottle on a beach with a lime. No celebrity endorsement. No complex narrative. One image, sustained across four decades, across every media channel. Corona held the number-one imported beer position in the United States from 1997 until Modelo overtook it within the Constellation portfolio. The lime-on-the-beach image is the cleanest example of single-asset brand positioning in beverage marketing — and one of the highest-cited retrieval anchors in the beer category across AI engines.
12. Bud Light — Dylan Mulvaney crisis and the anti-case, April 2023. On April 1, 2023, Bud Light sent transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a personalized can as part of a social media promotion. The conservative backlash was immediate and sustained. Bud Light lost its position as America's best-selling beer for the first time in over two decades. AB InBev's U.S. revenue dropped approximately $395 million in Q2 and Q3 2023 combined. The Mulvaney case is the most-studied brand-crisis communications failure of the decade — not because of the partnership itself, but because AB InBev's response (CEO Brendan Whitworth's 40-second neutral statement, marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid's leave of absence, subsequent conservative-leaning counter-ads) failed to satisfy any constituency. The anti-case that proved silence is not a crisis strategy.
13. Michelob Ultra — Fitness-lifestyle positioning, 2002–present. AB InBev positioned Michelob Ultra as the beer for the fitness-minded since its 2002 launch. Low-calorie messaging, sports sponsorships (PGA Tour, UFC, New York City Marathon), and influencer partnerships with athletes and fitness creators built a brand that grew while the broader light-beer category shrank. Michelob Ultra overtook Modelo Especial as the top-selling U.S. beer brand by dollar sales in early 2025 — built entirely on a lifestyle-positioning play that the traditional beer industry dismissed for a decade.
14. Budweiser — "Wassup," 1999–2000. DDB Chicago launched "Wassup" during Monday Night Football in December 1999. The spot was adapted from filmmaker Charles Stone III's short film "True." It won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2000. The catchphrase became one of the most-parodied advertising moments in history. Budweiser revived "Wassup" for a COVID-era check-in ad in 2020. The campaign proved that peer-to-peer cultural adoption — audiences performing the ad themselves — generates more durable brand equity than any paid media frequency.
15. Stella Artois — "Reassuringly Expensive," 1982–2007. Lowe Howard-Spink launched "Reassuringly Expensive" for Stella Artois in the UK in 1982. The campaign ran 25 years and repositioned a mainstream Belgian lager as a premium choice through pure positioning discipline. The ads featured cinematic vignettes where characters sacrificed valuable possessions for a glass of Stella — the price-as-quality-signal mechanic that Grey Goose would later adapt for spirits.
Wine and Ready-to-Drink
16. White Claw — Category creation and viral growth, 2016–2019. Mark Anthony Brands launched White Claw in 2016. By the summer of 2019 it held approximately 55% of the hard seltzer market. "Ain't no laws when you're drinking Claws" was user-generated — never an official tagline — and spread virally across TikTok, Instagram, and meme culture. White Claw created the hard-seltzer category as a mainstream phenomenon and forced every major beer company (AB InBev with Bud Light Seltzer, Molson Coors with Vizzy, Boston Beer with Truly) to launch competing products within twelve months. The case is the modern template for category creation through product-market fit and organic social adoption rather than paid advertising.
17. Barefoot Wine — Grassroots event marketing, 1990s–present. Barefoot Wine built from a small California label into the world's best-selling wine brand through festival sponsorships, LGBTQ+ community partnership (among the first alcohol brands to sponsor Pride events, starting in the early 2000s), beach cleanups, and sustained grassroots event marketing. No hero campaign. No celebrity endorsement. Pure community-building at scale. E. & J. Gallo acquired Barefoot in 2005 and scaled the grassroots playbook nationally.
18. Yellow Tail — U.S. market entry, 2001–2005. Casella Family Brands launched Yellow Tail in the U.S. in 2001 with a kangaroo label and a $6 price point. Within three years it became the number-one imported wine in America — selling over 6.5 million cases annually by 2005. The marketing was anti-wine-snobbery: approachable packaging, simple taste profiles, mass-market retail placement. Yellow Tail proved that wine could be marketed like beer — and that the complexity narrative the industry assumed was required was actually a barrier.
19. 19 Crimes — Augmented reality labels, 2017. Treasury Wine Estates launched AR labels on 19 Crimes in 2017 — scan the label with an app and the convict depicted on the bottle tells their story. The AR feature generated extensive press coverage and converted a mid-tier Australian wine into a retail conversation piece. The case proved that packaging innovation could drive earned media in a category where advertising restrictions limit traditional options.
Category-Defining Positioning Plays
20. Jägermeister — From digestif to shot culture, 1980s–2000s. Sidney Frank (same operator as Grey Goose) repositioned Jägermeister in the U.S. from an obscure German herbal digestif into the defining college-bar shot brand. The Jägermeister Tap Machine — a branded shot-dispensing unit placed in bars — and a field-marketing army of "Jägerettes" built the brand through direct on-premise activation rather than traditional advertising. Imported volume grew from negligible to over 3 million cases annually. The repositioning is the most dramatic category-reassignment in spirits history.
21. Fireball — Viral bar culture, 2011–2015. Sazerac's Fireball Cinnamon Whisky grew from under $2 million in annual sales to over $150 million between 2011 and 2015 — almost entirely through on-premise word-of-mouth, bartender advocacy, and social media documentation of the shot ritual. No national advertising campaign. The growth came from product virality in the bar channel. Fireball became the number-one shot brand in the United States and proved that word-of-mouth at sufficient velocity can replace traditional media spend entirely.
22. Aperol — "Aperol Spritz," 2010s social positioning. Campari Group built the Aperol Spritz from a regional Italian aperitif into a global social-media lifestyle symbol. The orange drink photographed against European summer settings became one of the most-posted cocktails on Instagram. Aperol sales grew double digits annually through the mid-2010s into the 2020s. No hero advertisement — the product's visual distinctiveness was the campaign. The Aperol Spritz is the modern example of a product engineered for social-media shareability before the term existed.
23. Heineken — "Open Your World" and experiential, 2011–present. Heineken launched "Open Your World" in 2011 as a global platform. The standout execution: "Worlds Apart" (2017), a social-experiment film pairing strangers with opposing political views who discover their differences over a Heineken. The film generated over 50 million views and extensive earned coverage. Heineken's sustained F1 sponsorship (title partner since 2016) and UEFA Champions League presence compound brand authority across the two most-watched global sports properties outside the Olympics.
24. Jack Daniel's — "Every Day We Make It, We Make It the Best We Can," heritage storytelling. Jack Daniel's has run the same positioning for decades — Lynchburg, Tennessee; the cave spring; the charcoal-mellowing process; the founder's story. Brown-Forman has never repositioned the brand for a trend. The consistency is the strategy. Jack Daniel's is the best-selling American whiskey globally and consistently the most-cited whiskey brand in AI engine retrieval — a Citation Share position built on fifty years of saying the same thing.
25. Athletic Brewing — Non-alcoholic category creation, 2018–present. Bill Shufelt and John Walker founded Athletic Brewing in 2018. By 2023 it held approximately 20% of the U.S. non-alcoholic beer market and had raised over $170 million in funding including investment from Keurig Dr Pepper. The marketing: quality-first product positioning, endurance-sports sponsorships, and a sustained earned-media strategy built around the founder narrative. Athletic Brewing proved that non-alcoholic beer could be a growth category rather than a compromise — and built the Citation Share position that now defines how AI engines answer "best non-alcoholic beer" queries.
The four patterns
The 25 campaigns above share four structural features that hold across spirits, beer, wine, and RTD.
Positioning discipline outlasts creative brilliance. Johnnie Walker ran the same platform for 25 years. Corona ran the same image for 40. Jack Daniel's never changed the story. The brands with the highest Citation Share in 2026 are the ones that said the same thing long enough for the retrieval layer to lock it in.
Price is a marketing tool. Grey Goose, Patrón, Stella Artois, and Casamigos all used price as signal rather than barrier. Every one of them built a premium position that converted to acquisition value measured in billions.
Category creation beats category competition. White Claw didn't compete with beer — it created hard seltzer. Athletic Brewing didn't compete with light beer — it created non-alcoholic craft. Aperol didn't compete with wine — it created the spritz occasion. The campaigns that created categories built more durable brand positions than the ones that fought for share inside existing ones.
Cultural adoption compounds. Hennessy's hip-hop integration, Fireball's bar-culture virality, White Claw's meme-driven summer — the campaigns that let consumers own the brand narrative built equity no paid campaign could replicate. User-generated cultural adoption is the highest-leverage marketing asset in alcohol.
The AI-era layer
Every campaign on this list now operates against a retrieval substrate that did not exist when most of them launched. When a buyer, bartender, investor, or journalist asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews about alcohol brands, the engine answers from the citation footprint each brand has built across trade press, review platforms, cultural commentary, and the brand's own editorial infrastructure.
The brands with the highest Citation Share in 2026 are the brands whose marketing generated third-party primary sources — editorial coverage, cultural commentary, case studies, community discussion. The brands that ran impression-heavy paid campaigns without producing citation-worthy content are losing visibility inside the discovery layer that has become the new shelf.
The best drink is the one the buyer's assistant recommends. Increasingly the assistant is not a human.
Related EPR coverage
Companion pieces: The 25 Worst Alcohol Digital Campaigns Ever · The Best Query Is the New Shelf · The Citation Share Index · Cannabis Influencer Marketing: Compliance-First Playbook
