Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila on Monday announced a social media campaign and accompanying product launch meant to tap into Gen Z’s fixation on “little treat culture,” or small indulgences, and bridge fashion with functionality. The efforts are tied to the brand’s celebration of what it bills as 818 Day (Aug. 18).
“Free the Nip” — a cheeky nod to the “free the nipple” movement — reimagines the classic shooter as not only a minibar staple, but a fashion must-have, a direction inspired by the younger cohort’s allegiance to expressive purchases like Labubu dolls and lip gloss keychains. The campaign serves to introduce the brand’s new 818 Minis, which are 50ml bottles of 818 Tequila’s Reposado and Blanco products, and will include influencer activations and content featuring the product in on-the-go scenarios and unexpected places.
818 Minis will roll out nationwide in September. Additionally, the brand created limited-edition collectible bundles featuring 818 Mini Bag Charms that hold the 818 Minis that will be available on Gopuff starting Sept. 8 at 12 p.m. ET. The minis launch strategy sees the marketer operating in a way typically reserved for brands in categories like beauty, explained Kathleen Braine, CMO at 818 parent Calabasas Beverage Company.
“As a spirits brand, you’re not always able to participate in some of the fun trends on social that beauty brands get to do, and this is a fun way of us kind of tongue-in-cheek putting the mini in a space that could normally be filled by a lip gloss or a hair clip,” Braine said.
The latest move from 818 Tequila continues the brand’s focus on tapping into culture, which it has done through other recent efforts including its first national sports partnership with NASCAR driver Toni Breidinger. Those efforts have helped the brand defy industry odds — though the tequila category as a whole only grew 2% in volume last year, 818 saw 40% year-over-year volume growth, per data shared by the brand.
Braine has served as 818 Tequila’s CMO for two years, but has been with the company for over four years. Marketing Dive recently spoke with the executive to learn more about the brand’s approach to marketing around culture and her thoughts on the increasingly crowded social media landscape.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Marketing Dive: What insights informed your decision to tap into the “little treat” trend, and how does it align with 818’s brand ethos?
KATHLEEN BRAINE: We’ve always been about shared moments between friends and family and magical moments — that’s a big pillar of our brand — and I think this extension into a different size made us think, not only are we about these magical moments, but we’re more than just a traditional spirits brand, we’re actually more like a lifestyle brand in that we speak about things in a lifestyle manner.
We’re thinking this is such a cool opportunity to feature our minis in not the traditional way that minis are featured — they’re sort of confined to an airplane drink cart or hotel minibar — and in this campaign, we’re letting them free. That aligns nicely to the little treat culture right now, where you see a lot of people looking for the little joys in life. The minis can be another way of expressing that little joy.
“Free the Nip” reimagines the classic “nip” or shooter as not only a minibar item, but a must-have fashion accessory. Why was it important to mix fashion with functionality?
We’ve always been a brand that has really cared about our brand identity visually, and our aesthetic, and that’s something that Kendall, our founder, has had as a North Star for us from the very beginning. When we’re saying fashion, we’re actually just saying aesthetic and lifestyle and branding, we’re not a clothing item, but lip gloss isn’t a clothing item either, but these beauty brands are curating an aesthetic that appeals to their consumer and builds brand equity around their brand, that their brand lives in this aesthetic space.
It’s the occasions that [our product] can be used in, and the occasions through which we can express our aesthetic are sort of around cocktails and at-home drinking, things like that. But the minis have opened us up to another avenue, there’s a Get Ready With Me moment, there’s bringing it with you to the party, but it’s clipped to your bag.
818 Tequila also recently announced its first national sports partnership with NASCAR driver Toni Breidinger. What are your top considerations when deciding whether or not to market around various cultural touchpoints?
We are always looking first at what our consumer is interested in, and what the insight is that ties the moment together. I think the minis are interesting because we were already planning on launching these — if you know anything about the supply chain and product innovation life cycles and alcohol, they’re very long. It’s not like we were able to say, “Labubu is trending, we’re gonna launch these minis” and do it in three months.
The insight was already there [that] people want a more convenient and accessible form of their favorite spirit, specifically in the consumer group that we’re working with, which is a lot of Gen Z and millennial consumers who are looking to do things like celebrate a bachelorette party, have a girls night in where they do an aesthetic cheese plate. The mini already had a space in that, and then it just so happened that we’re seeing this cultural trend of little treat culture, bag charms, and we were like, this makes total sense, there’s a way to plus this up even more with this limited-edition bag charm.
We've seen major marketers like Unilever adopting social-first, influencer-heavy strategies this year. Does that change the equation for 818 at all?
We’ve always been a social-first brand, so it really hasn’t shifted anything for us. I think it’s the bigger ships in the marketing space, the bigger consumer brands, that this is a shift for them. Toni, our NASCAR driver, is one of the first actual sponsorships we’ve ever done — we really don’t do sponsorships. Our marketing is very driven by social, digital, influencer, content creator and our founder. It’s not really a step change when that’s how we’ve operated from the beginning. It’s just gotten more popular for brands to do it because they see how effective it is.
What spaces or trends is the brand looking to step into next?
We speak both to a Gen Z consumer and a millennial consumer, [the latter] who’s really interested in things like mixology and at-home hosting and entertaining, so a lot of our new stuff coming up will either be focused more on that Gen Z going out occasion, and then also that millennial consumer, who is also a core consumer of 818, who is looking to host at home and make fun cocktails.
