Ep 495: How Tito’s Built America’s #1 Vodka Brand Without Celebrities or Flavors

Summary

Summary of DTC Podcast Episode 495: "How Tito’s Built America’s #1 Vodka Brand Without Celebrities or Flavors"

In episode 495 of the DTC Podcast, hosted by Eric Dick, Taylor Berry from Tito's Handmade Vodka shares the remarkable journey of how Tito's ascended to become America's leading vodka brand without leveraging celebrities or introducing flavored variants. The conversation delves into Taylor's professional background, the authentic branding strategies employed by Tito's, innovative marketing campaigns like the Spokescart, and the brand's commitment to community engagement.

---

1. Taylor Berry’s Hero’s Journey and Role at Tito's

Taylor Berry begins by recounting his career trajectory, highlighting his tenure at Apple and his pivotal role at Droga 5 where he worked on the Dos Equis account. His path to Tito's was serendipitous, stemming from a chance meeting with Tito Beverage at a USC UT football game. This encounter led Taylor to relocate from New York to Austin, marking a transformative decision that aligned him with a rapidly growing, family-owned business.

"I ended up moving from New York to Austin about two months later. And man, it was the best decision of my entire life." — Taylor Berry [02:31]

2. The Origin Story of Tito’s Handmade Vodka

Taylor delves into the humble beginnings of Tito's. Initially a geologist and entrepreneur with ventures in the oil industry, Tito Beverage faced multiple business failures before venturing into the vodka market. Utilizing his scientific background, Tito meticulously crafted his vodka by experimenting with ingredients and distillation methods in a makeshift still fashioned from a turkey fryer and an old keg. Despite financial constraints, including funding the initial operations through credit cards, Tito's passion and dedication laid the foundation for what would become a national brand.

"He started his own mortgage company, still broke. And as gifts, he started infusing cheap vodka for his friends." — Taylor Berry [05:06]

3. Branding and Authenticity

A cornerstone of Tito's success is its unwavering commitment to authenticity. Unlike many spirits brands that invest heavily in sleek packaging and celebrity endorsements, Tito's maintains a simple, unpolished aesthetic that resonates with everyday consumers. The original label, designed by Tito using CorelDRAW, has remained largely unchanged, embodying the brand’s genuine and approachable nature.

"It's just a really nice breath of fresh air." — Taylor Berry [10:44]

4. Marketing Strategies and Early Wins

Taylor emphasizes the importance of establishing a strong brand voice. Instead of diversifying into flavored vodkas like many competitors, Tito's focused on maintaining a single, high-quality product. Creative initiatives, such as the "Tito's in a Can" campaign, showcased the brand’s quirky personality and received positive feedback for their originality and relatability.

"We never felt like we had the need to have somebody represent the brand for us." — Taylor Berry [15:46]

5. The "Dog for Dog People" Campaign

One of Tito's standout marketing efforts is the "Dog for Dog People" program, which originated from Tito’s genuine love for dogs. Initially, Tito would feed stray dogs near his distillery, a gesture that evolved into a formalized program supporting local shelters and nonprofits. This initiative not only addresses a community need but also deepens the emotional connection between the brand and its consumers.

"We started working with a local nonprofit here called Emancipet that works on low cost spay neuter in Austin." — Taylor Berry [19:08]

6. The Spokescart Campaign

The Spokescart campaign represents Tito's innovative approach to marketing. Developed in collaboration with agency Arts and Letters, Spokescart is an autonomous bar cart designed to enhance everyday situations with Tito's cocktails. This campaign aligns with the "With Tito’s" brand platform, aiming to make any good situation even better with a touch of humor and quirkiness. Unlike traditional advertising that relies on celebrities, Spokescart embodies the brand's unique personality, offering relatable and entertaining content.

"It's such a funny idea... a little bit outside of the traditional advertising space." — Taylor Berry [22:37]

7. Measuring Campaign Performance

Taylor discusses the challenges of measuring campaign effectiveness in the alcohol industry, where direct sales data is often limited due to regulatory restrictions. Tito's leverages engagement metrics, social media interactions, and partnerships with panel organizations to gauge the success of campaigns like Spokescart. These methods provide directional insights into household penetration and overall brand awareness.

"Engagement is a huge thing for a campaign like this." — Taylor Berry [31:48]

8. Future Plans and Community Engagement

Looking ahead, Tito's plans to expand the Spokescart’s presence at real-world events such as music festivals and branded experiences. This initiative aims to enhance consumer interaction and further solidify Tito's position in the market. Additionally, the brand remains committed to community-focused programs, ensuring that its growth continues to benefit the communities it serves.

"It's going to be the next unlock for us." — Taylor Berry [35:25]

---

Notable Quotes

• "It's a crowded category... the quality of the product, and I think that's paramount." — Taylor Berry [15:46]
• "This whole thing could not have happened without them." — Taylor Berry [15:14]
• "We do things a little bit differently... resourceful very much as the way the, the spokescart is resourceful in a way." — Taylor Berry [27:56]
• "It doesn't need to be gut-busting... it's meant to be charming." — Taylor Berry [31:28]

---

Conclusion

Taylor Berry's insights reveal that Tito's Handmade Vodka's ascent to the top is rooted in authenticity, community engagement, and innovative marketing strategies that eschew traditional celebrity endorsements. By maintaining a singular focus on quality and fostering genuine relationships with consumers, Tito's has carved out a unique space in the competitive spirits market, setting a benchmark for direct-to-consumer brands aiming to build lasting success without conventional marketing shortcuts.

Transcript

[Taylor Berry]

The good gets great with Tito's, it's basically, how can you make any inherently good situation just a little bit better with Tito's cocktail? When Arts and Letters presented the idea of an autonomous bar cart that from day one was called Spokescart, we just fell in love. It was so different and funny. The scenarios that you can put it in are endless. We never felt like we had the need to have somebody represent the brand for us. When you look at the broader spirits category and how many celebrities are involved with brands these days, we've always done things a little bit differently. And this felt like a way that we could just do it differently than everybody else.

[Eric Dick]

Imagine having the world's top social creative experts on your team, analyzing your ads, auditing your ad library and helping you deliver more winning creatives. You don't have to imagine any more because Motion just launched expert agents, AI powered workflows designed by the industry's best creative strategists. These aren't gender generic AI tools. Each workflow is built by real performance marketers actively managing high spending ad accounts. You'll get access to things like Creative Performance Analyzer, powered by Dara Denny's framework, which helps you break down what's working and what's not with each of your ads. Or Ugly Ad Finder, created by Barry Hott, which scans your top spending ads and serves up organic social inspiration so you can make ads that actually stop. The scroll or Scale Unlocker from Jess Bachman, which maps your current ad spend across the awareness stages to pinpoint your biggest growth. Unlock plus Motion's expert agents include custom tools for social listening, strategic ad iteration, and more, giving your team the insights of a veteran creative strategist at no extra cost. Start shipping more winning ads [e-mail] expert-agents. Taylor Berry. Welcome to the DTC Podcast. This is. This marks the first time we've had a liquor brand, I believe, on the podcast, not to mention the United States number one vodka brand, Tito's Handmade Vodka, one of my favorite brands. Welcome to the podcast, man.

[Taylor Berry]

Thanks so much for having me, Eric. This is. This is going to be great.

[Eric Dick]

Yeah. This came about through a press release that you guys sent out about a campaign that you're running that I want to dive into, but maybe let's start. I always like to start with people's hero's journey. So if you could just talk a little bit about your hero's journey. I know you've been at Tito's for a bit over six years. A little bit of your Hero's Journey and lead that into kind of a story of Tito's as a brand.

[Taylor Berry]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I spent a lot of my career working on Apple, doing advertising for them in Los Angeles. And I moved out to New York, worked at a couple agencies and landed at Droga 5 and was able to work on the Dos Equis account there, which was such an interesting challenge because I think we were the first agency to get the business after they retired the most interesting man in the world. So just a super challenging brief and it kind of got my feet wet with the alcohol industry and it was super interesting to just kind of see the intricacies of the alcohol industry. It's. It's so complicated and every state runs differently and there's this three tier system with distributors and anyway, I was going out to, to Austin to, for a USC UT football game. I'm a Trojan, graduated from there. And basically, you know, I was doing this Dos Equis thing and I got introduced to Tito and Tito Beverage, which is his actual real name. Absolutely crazy.

[Eric Dick]

That's his, his last name is Beverage.

[Taylor Berry]

Beverage spelled a little bit differently, but unreal nomenclature is destiny. So I end up having this conversation with him and it was just kind of, you know, like two people meeting and kind of understanding, you know, and getting to know each other basically. You know, he had a head of marketing role open and asked me if I wanted to hop in his truck and go interview for it. And so I did. And so I basically had to cancel all my plans for that weekend for this game and ended up going to the office, having a couple of conversations and moved into a bunch of different grounds and ended up moving from New York to Austin about two months later. And man, it was the best decision of my entire life. I mean, I think it opened up so many opportunities both for me and also just to be able to be a part of something so special. You know, at the time, Tito's was already on this insane growth path and it was just so refreshing to be in an organization like Tito's Handmade Vodka that really still embraced that sort of family owned business. And it's still private and it allowed for so much creativity and kind of be able to bring all the experiences that I had at larger organizations and bring it to something that still felt incredibly small and still does to this day feel incredibly small. So that's a brief summary of kind of my path here and describe for.

[Eric Dick]

Those who may not know, we've got a mostly US audience, but with a lot of internationals who listen as well. But like, describe just Tito's brand ascendancy. Like, it started in the mid-90s as like, I was just, I was just chat gpting it just like as grassroots a beginning as you could expect.

[Taylor Berry]

Yeah, I mean, I could sit here for an hour and a half and tell you the whole story, but I'll. I'll try to be as. As succinct as possible. Yes, Tito is still it. Yeah, distill it down exactly. Tito is just absolutely magnetic figure and really, really incredibly smart. He actually was a geologist and geophysicist. Graduated from ut, spent a lot of his early jobs in the oil business in South America. He had, I think, three different failed organ companies that he had started. My favorite is the UNO Oil Corporation because he was the UNO employee. You know, he. It's as if his luck continually ran out. Right. He would, he would start this job and then it would be, you know, a horrible situation that he would. He kind of ended up moving back to Texas and would start this new company. And then, you know, some geopolitical thing happened and it caused, you know, the oil industry to come crashing down. After all of that, you know, all of these different failures, a friend of his told him that he should get into the mortgage business. And so he decides to do that. You know, he was previously in Tyvek suits and sweating in all of these, you know, oil fields. And there he got to, you know, be in air conditioning with a suit and whatever. And you know, at the time, though, he was still broke. He started his own mortgage company, still broke. And as gifts, he started infusing cheap vodka for his friends. So he'd basically take a plastic, you know, bottle of vodka, put it into a mason jar, put some dried cherries or habaneros or whatever it might be, whatever, you know, the, the flavor that was that, that year and gift it for holidays and birthdays and things like that. The story goes, he was at a party and a guy comes up to him, he's like, hey, are. You're the vodka guy, right? And he's like, no, I'm actually, I'm actually the mortgage guy. What are you talking about? And it basically just got him thinking. And he saw this late night talk show that was basically, you know, inspirational speaker that said if you want to find your passion, right, a line down the middle of a sheet of paper on one side, right, what you're good at and the other side of what you love to do, and, you know, it's not as emotional as you think it Would be in terms of this list. It's like, I like math, I like problem solving, I like, you know, I'm good at that. I'm good at talking to people. I love talking to people. I like ac, I like science, right? But it's like all of these kind of different, you know, kind of innate things about the person that kind of led him to like, I could actually do this vodka thing. And so, you know, you go back to the mid-90s and it's fascinating because, you know, I think at the time we thought, oh, I can just take these mason jars or, you know, these, these, these infusions and take it to a liquor store. But like I was mentioning, the alcohol industry is very complicated, and you can't just go into a liquor store as a supplier and go sell something and get cash in return, right? And so you kind of have to go back to the drawing board. The wildest thing about all of this is that you think about Texas and you think about cowboys and whiskey and all these things. There wasn't a single legal distillery in Texas at the time. So Tito basically had to read through all of the code and basically figure out how he could actually make a distillery and actually start one. He read through the code, he went to the library and made photocopies of everything and ended up basically getting a distilling license from, from the state of Texas. And you know, it's funny because he's not a distiller by trade, right? So not only, you know, infusing is a lot different than distilling. And you know, you kind of take that sort of mentality that he has of like a problem solver and a scientist, and he started, you know, gathering photos of old moonshiners from, from the early, the turn of the century and started basically built his first still out of scrap parts, a turkey fryer, turkey frying rig, and an old keg. And it's basically tinkered around with it with different ingredients, Bought all the top shelf vodka and tried different ingredients, different distillation methods until he felt like what he made was better than anything else that you could buy on the shelf. And you think that, okay, yeah, the story ends there. He started Tito's handmade vodka. Again, there's so much more detail and it's such a fun story to go and, and, and kind of dive into, but you're still a nascent brand with no funding. I mean, the other thing is he tried to get investors and he didn't get any and had to put the whole thing on 19 credit cards, where you just transfer the balance over and over again to new credit cards. And, you know, it's. It's. It's a grind trying to start any sort of brand. And you don't have. Back in. In the mid-90s, you don't have the same resources that you necessarily do today, especially within the marketing space. But I think it's interesting. It's the power of word of mouth, and I think it's also the power of Texas brands. People in this state love the products from this state, and I think when people started trying it, even around Austin, they would bring it home or bring it to their friends and that sort of thing. And I think we always credit so much of our success to our fans because, truthfully, in those early days, they were just a huge part of the growth of the brand. But at the same time, you know, the value prop of Tito's, I think, is something that really helped drive the growth, too. Right. It was designed as being a really good product at a really fair price. You know, in this kind of world of spirits, where all these, like, lofty ideals are present, this was just a really nice breath of fresh air.

[Eric Dick]

And I can see that in the brand. Like, I actually just googled, like, Tito's brand evolution, and it looks like it hasn't changed. Like the actual brand itself, the brand mark looks the same. Some slight differences. I was reading just about the. The bottle choice. Talk a little bit about the. Maybe the. The brand and the actual product appearance and how that's maybe led to this Texas brand growth as well.

[Taylor Berry]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a stock bottle, right. It's not anything that's we've designed in a lab or anything like that. Tito designed the label himself in Coreldraw, and he thought lucida calligraphy was the fanciest font that he could find and thought it was really premium. And, you know, it's on a. It's on a kraft paper label that looks like a napkin that you could get at a truck stop. You know, it's just kind of like it was. A lot of it was based around necessity and kind of the resources that were available at the time. And it's funny because I feel like the logo and the brand mark have, you know, at the beginning, people. A lot of people said it was ugly, right? It's just an ugly logo, and it's become almost iconic and representative of even just kind of like the craft movement of itself, you know, And I think we have every opportunity that we could want to go redesign it. And it's actually super interesting to go on the Internet and see kind of some, some design case studies of people that have, have redesigned our branding. But it's so important to who we are, right? And we haven't changed. And the fact that we are just make one product, right? It's just. And we love to say it's vodka flavored vodka. It's the same thing that you've been getting, you know, for 25 years and it just hasn't changed. And sure, there's been like some slight label updates and things like that, but nothing that's, you know, groundbreaking brand, complete refresh.

[Eric Dick]

Talk a little bit about Tito's evolution as a craft brand and what that exactly means.

[Taylor Berry]

I would say that like Tito's is, is almost one of kind of the, the grandfathers of, of the craft movement, right? When you think about craft beer and even just kind of that whole trend in the early 2000s, 2010s, you know, where kind of everybody was dressing as if they were a member of Mumford and Sons, you know, it got super popular and wasn't like a marketing ploy for us, right? It truly was. I mean, there was a guy that was distilling this by hand. He was putting all of these paper labels with Elmer's glue onto every single bottle, you know, hand filling everything, right? It was true. It wasn't something that was just kind of made up. And you know, it's. I think it is representative of kind of the craft movement. And again, something that was kind of like the, the foundation of some of that, especially within, within the spirit space. And you know, I think it's something that stayed with us. And we always say, you know, it's the same stuff that we've always made. We just have a lot more stills, right? We just, we've just had to kind of, you know, grow for the demand of the, of the consumer that we have and the, and the love that we have from our, from our fans. But it, you know, it's not contrived. It's. It's something. And that is, you know, it's an overused word, but it's authentic to us because it's truly where we came from.

[Eric Dick]

How important? It's funny, my, my introduction to the brand was. I was in San Diego actually, and my friend who was an ex bartender was telling me that it was like the only thing that, that she drinks, it was, it was her favorite. How important has that like relationship with bartenders and bar owners been for the brand Hugely important.

[Taylor Berry]

I mean, I think again, it goes back to. To, you know, that. That word of mouth and they have been just. That community in general has been such an incredible relationship for us throughout. Throughout the history of this brand. And as you've seen, you know, and I wasn't here for all of this, but, you know, you saw the brand kind of grow outside of Texas. It's that recommendation engine, right? It's people believing in the brand and understanding the story and hearing where we came from. Right. And understanding that it's not something that is just kind of developed by a marketing team. You know, it is that authenticity of the brand that I think has led so many people to have a relationship with it, whether it's a consumer or a bartender. And we're forever grateful to that. That entire community because it's. It truly couldn't. This whole thing could not have happened without them. And we continue to try to improve and extend those relationships as much as we possibly can. You know, it's such an important part of this industry and of our business at large.

[Eric Dick]

Yeah, I'm just reading, like, unlike traditional vodka brands that emphasize sleek bottles and exclusivity, your branding is unpolished, friendly and humorous, resonates deeply with everyday drinkers, has become a challenger, a challenger brand in the industry dominated by premium imports. I'm curious from a brand marketing perspective. I want to get into the spokescart campaign that you're launching now or you've launched. What. What were some of the. With in terms of your marketing role at the brand. What are. What were some of the early wins before the sports spokescart that you were sort of a part of championing, I.

[Taylor Berry]

Think the biggest thing was, was really honing in on the. The brand voice, right? And, you know, even from the quote you just said, right. There are. It's. It's a crowded category. I mean, spirits, there is infinite choice, right? You mean you go to any liquor store and I mean, the store is dedicated to liquor, right. The only other thing that's like, that is like a bookstore, right? Like, there's just so many different things that are. That are available and of course, the quality of the product, and I think that's paramount. And again, I think that's probably the main reason as to why people gravitated towards this brand is understanding just that it was so good and, and so reasonable. But as. As we continue to grow, understanding that we have to have a personality with a brand, we need to have a relationship with consumers, was. Was a huge thing that we were trying to accomplish. And I think we really honed in on this sort of irreverent tone that doesn't take anything too seriously. It's, it's. There are people behind this brand, right? And, and it goes back to that idea of it still being this independent company that, that has real people behind it and real people that have been there for a long time that have, have watched it grow and been part of the entire journey. And you know, I think we want to make sure that that comes through in every piece of communication that we have and that there's some emotional connection to it. Right? Of course there's the hard working things, but understanding how to even articulate those hard working conversion type tactics in a way that feels like you're establishing a relationship with the consumer is, I think, incredibly important. And we started really kind of honing that in, you know, a year or two from when I started getting that. When I, when I got there. Probably the, the best example of it in that time was, you know, the canned cocktail seltzer trend started happening, right? And all of these brands started popping up. You know, you had White Claw and Truly and those sorts of things. But then you also had, you know, pretty much every major spirits brand making their own canned cocktail. Right. And we were never going to do that. Right. Again. We do one product. One product. Well, one product only. And we saw a lot of consumers asking us to make a Tito's and soda in a can or something like that. And so we came up with this kind of silly idea about selling a, you know, essentially like a yeti cooler or yeti, you know, vessel in the shape of a can that was just empty so you could make whatever you wanted on the inside. And it was called, it was called Tito's in a Can. And you know, you could go buy it on our web store and I still use it daily. It's, it's kind of a, it's, it's just a quirky thing. I mean, like the, the entire branding of the whole thing looks like it should be a seltzer. And so, you know, once we launched that, the feedback that we were getting through the social media was very much so, like this is something that only Tito's could do. And when we started to internalize that of like, you know, these are the kinds of swings that we should be taking, right? These are the kinds of swings of a personality that can be unique and something that kind of is different from this industry that is, can be very cookie cutter.

[Eric Dick]

The other thing that I wanted to mention to my girlfriend, when I said I was gonna have you guys on the podcast, she's like, oh, they're the vodka for dog people. And I hadn't heard of that. I was, how did, how did that come about?

[Taylor Berry]

Again, I think it's like something that's based in reality. So, like, you know, mentioning this whole story. And again, Tito was out there by himself. He built this small 998 square foot shack that he distilled out of for years. And it was just him and his dog, Dog Joe, out there. And it's kind of out, you know, towards, you know, outside of like the main Austin city center, where's where our distillery is and still is today. But he has dog out there and, you know, he put food out for Dog Joe and then bunch of strays would start coming and he would take them in and feed them too. And it was just kind of something that was, you know, inherent to Tito as a person and then part of our brand. And now we have a whole program called Dog for Dog People and it's run by one of our, kind of our employees that has been here the longest. And, you know, she loves dogs. She was hired, kind of basically started helping support local shelters and nonprofits in Austin to help kind of help solve problems, the stray dog issue. And as we continue to grow and started kind of having that be more of a cornerstone of the organization, we started working with a local nonprofit here called Emancipet that works on low cost spay neuter in Austin and kind of thinking about, how do you solve the larger stray problem at large? And so it kind of just grew into something that now we activate across the entire country and again internationally. And it's all based in philanthropy around animals and dogs. And whether it's, we call them yappy hours, doing them at bars and inviting consumers, it's all based around fundraising. But it's become an amazing marketing tool as well. People love dogs, but everything that we do with it, it's not just to say, Tito's and dogs, it's that Tito's loves dogs and we want to help every city that we operate in. And I think, you know, again, going back to what we were saying about, you know, the bottle or kind of our personality or anything, it's just, it's inherent and true to what this brand. It's not a contrived marketing tool and.

[Eric Dick]

It'S a great audience to resonate with. Right, because they're, they're a great group of customers. They're loyal, like dogs and it. Yeah, I think. I think it was a really smart move. It definitely got my girl. I definitely. My, you know, my girlfriend is a Tito's lifetime customer. I think because of that reason.

[Taylor Berry]

I mean, I love it. And again, I mean, I think we're doing great work in this space. It's a perfect example of, like, how to marry something like that that is based in this kind of emotional truth of the brand and then with that sort of irreverent tone. And this is one of my other favorite things that we've done, but we did this whole campaign around the walktail, which is basically a cocktail that you drink while you're on a walk with your dog roadie. Exactly, exactly. And we, you know, our team kind of flagged it during the pandemic and saw a New York Times article about it, that people were doing this, and we're like, well, we could make an entire thing out of this. And it was pretty fun. We designed, like, a fanny pack, but it had, like, a bandolier, so you could fit little minis on your belt. So, you know, if you're on. And it had a little cup holder and stuff. So it's just kind of, you know, it was just some fun marketing tactics that we were playing around with, with. With this whole, you know, dog for dog people platform.

[Eric Dick]

Super cool. Let's talk a little bit about the spokescart. How did the spokes cart campaign concept first come about?

[Taylor Berry]

Yeah, so there's a lot of things that we do here. You know, I think there's an ethos of. Of kind of doing what you love at Tito's or letting Tito's help do what you love or what you care about. So whether that is, you know, in the nonprofit space or in the sponsorships or whatever, and, you know, your communication can kind of get a little bit varied. Right. And I think there is importance on being consistent in how you speak as a brand. And we felt like there was a need to kind of house everything under kind of a singular brand platform. And we hadn't really had that before. We had a tagline that was America's original craft vodka, which is. Is great. I mean, we are America's original craft vodka. But how, again, do we kind of evolve that into something with more personality? And so we worked with our agency, Arts and Letters, and developed this brand platform called With Tito's. And the idea is, basically, you can put anything in front of that, and we'll be there. Right. It's. It's what? It's martinis with Tito's. It's free games with Tito's. It's game days with Tito's. Whatever it is, right. It can be as. As esoteric as you want it to be, but we can help make that a great situation. But as we were going to kind of, you know, soft launch this, we're just thinking, okay, how. What is the way that we can kind of embody this into a singular campaign, right? If. If with Tito's is going to materialize in every piece of marketing that we do. What's. What's the tent pole idea? And the spokescart came from this with Tito's line. That was the good gets great with Tito's, right? And it's basically, how can you make any inherently good situation just a little bit better with the Tito's cocktail? And when Arts and Letters presented the idea of an autonomous bar cart that from day one was called spokescart, we just fell in love. It was just. It was so different and funny. And, you know, the beauty of it is that the scenarios that you can put it in are endless, right? Especially from. From an advertising point of view, there are so many just kind of everyday situations that are good. They are. They are objectively good scenarios. Make them a little bit better with the Tito's cocktail. And so it was. It was a little bit of like a funky idea that, you know, it's a little bit outside of the kind of like, traditional advertising space. But we love the. The concept of not having a spokesperson, right. I think that's something that we've never really done as a brand and never really relied on. On celebrities. And, well, you know, obviously we love the celebrities that. That love Tito's. We never felt like we had the need to have somebody kind of represent the brand for us. And this was such an interesting way of thinking about it, especially when you look at the broader spirits category and how many celebrities are involved with brands these days. It feels like they're. Maybe it's kind of slowing down a little bit now, but it was at a fever pitch where it felt like There was like 10 new brands coming out a day with some sort of celebrity tied to them. And we've always done things a little bit differently. And this felt like a way that we could just, you know, do it differently than everybody else. And why not have kind of this little autonomous, you know, rickety thing, come into everyday situations and make it a little bit better?

[Eric Dick]

I love it. And it's. I keep thinking of it because if it's like with Tito's you need something that is introducing Tito's to a situation. And that could I think of like the Kool Aid man busting a. On a bunch of kids, like having fun in a room, which is where they be drinking Kool. And he's like, oh, yeah. And it's like, or. Or like the, you know, the most interesting man in the world for dose equi shows up and it's like, oh, you need this beer, or whatever. But in your case, it's literally like a short circuit, like spokescart that can print out little messages. I was noticing humorous messages. Just kind of rolls up and offers Tito's.

[Taylor Berry]

Yeah. And I guess for our listeners, a spokes cart is a bar cart, right? So it's. It's just a bar cart that has, you know, pours Tito's cocktails, you know, through a little hole that comes out from the top. And you mentioned the printer. And I think that's probably the most fun part of the campaign is to think through what that little wink is at the end, right? What's the little extra thing that this bar cart can bring to every situation? And I think in the first year, you know, as we, as we launched it and we saw the feedback from. From that campaign, there was one of the. You mentioned it earlier, the rolling retriever one where, you know, it's at a dog park and it's just launching tennis balls through this, this bar cart. And it's, you know, it's just, it's quirky, it's weird, it's fun. And that was probably the. The most fun spot to shoot that year because it was all done pretty much practically, right? So we're actually, like, throwing, you know, tennis balls out to dogs that are there at the park. But when we, when it came to this year and coming up with four new, new ads, figuring out what that little wink was going to be was, it's the most exciting part, right? It's. It's. How are we going to bring even more joy to this, to this scenario?

[Eric Dick]

And so talk about the rollout. When you, when you got this campaign, you work with your agency, you produce the creative for a brand that has a footprint the size of Tito's. What what does rollout look like for a creative concept like this?

[Taylor Berry]

It's a good question. We do things a little bit differently. A few years back, Tito said that he was going to flatten the marketing budget and triple the philanthropy budget. Right. So despite the success of Tito's, it's not like we have, you know, budgets of, of you know, huge advertisers, we don't do linear TV ads. And so we kind of were resourceful very much as the way the, the spokescart is resourceful in a way. But, you know, I think this sort of campaign is part of a larger ecosystem for us. And so when think about the rollout of it, it's, you know, what is this? What's the goal of content like this for us? And again, I think that goes back to the personality point from earlier. It's how are we going to, you know, articulate what this brand is all about? How are we going to establish that relationship with a fan or consumer. Consumers. And so this is very much in that, in that sort of awareness consideration set, right? It's how do we, how do we. In the same way that in the ads the spokesperson comes to any situation, it's like, how can we make someone's feed just a little bit better, right? How can we make the viewing experience a little bit better at the end goal? It's meant to be entertaining. And so, you know, it's, it's very much in a paid media sense, focused on social media, you know, streaming platforms and digital, digital video. Especially in 2024 when we first launched it once we saw kind of the response to it and it ended up being our highest performing ad set last year. And we track it in a bunch of different ways. Again, it's a little bit different than, you know, let's say an E commerce ad that's directing you directly to Instacart or Doordash or something like that. Vodka in general, right. Isn't something that you go out and buy every single day, right? But it's something that you want to make sure is top of mind, right? And that someone feels like they have this relationship with. And so as an ad campaign, it's very much meant to do that, right? Like, it's meant, it's meant to continually remind you of this brand out there that's just a little bit quirky and that you should bring to your next party.

[Eric Dick]

And it's not over the top. It's funny, I was watching super bowl commercials and so many of them were just like so over the top that it was, that it was like, I think, I think of like the Seal campaign where it's like seal is actually a seal and I'm like, okay, like, whereas, like just that little bit of like a relatable experience and then something a little bit quirky, a little bit funny to me is such a smarter brand play than Something, you know, way, way over the top, I guess for me as a consumer anyway. Yeah.

[Taylor Berry]

And you know, I think there's a place for everything, right? Like, if you want to go completely over the top and especially for something like the super bowl, that, that garners a ton of attention and you want to stand out, it's, you know, to your point, there's a lot that's out there, right. So if you're one of many that are, you know, over the top and crazy and you know, the seal is a seal example or even, you know, I think another huge thing that we're seeing in advertising right now are these kind of like almost music video type ads, right? Where a ton of like, you know, music driven dancing type of things. There's not really a way that you can stand out from the others. Right. Like, it's like the classic insurance thing, right. Where you, you see an insurance ad over and over again. You're like, I know that person from that insurance ad, but I don't know what insurance ad that is because they all have people that do things, you know. And to your point, I think this, it's not meant to be gut busting. It's, it's, it's meant to be charming. Right. And if people can be, feel, you know, charmed by a rickety, you know, pile of wood, great and a good cocktail.

[Eric Dick]

When you mentioned the metrics being different, like what, what kind of metrics are you guys looking at when you roll this video, these video assets out, is it sort of eng. Is it view time? Are you looking at, are you looking at localized, like where you're spending and then you're looking at sort of like retail spend that increases along those lines. How do you, how do you look at performance?

[Taylor Berry]

It's. Yeah, it's a great question. Especially again with this industry. Alcohol is notorious for not having very much sales data. Right. Just, or first party data, because for the most part, outside of, you know, wine clubs and a couple of direct to consumer, you know, bottle marketplaces, first party data is hard to come by because by law we're not allowed to sell directly to a consumer. So it gets very creative in the way that you start kind of thinking about campaigns and how, how, you know, we look at, at, at tracking them. Engagement is a huge thing for a campaign like this. Right. Again, something that's supposed to garner an emotion, you know, like shares, comments, those sorts of things are a very good barometer for us to kind of just see how these, how these are working. Right. Also just having it kind of appear within kind of the cultural zeitgeist. But I think at the same time, you know, we've got to get smarter in this sort of world. And we have a pretty robust audience segmentation that we work with and work, you know, within our media plan. And that allows us to also kind of tweak the way that each one of these ads materializes in any given platform. Right. So when you kind of think about any one, any one scenario or vignette of these ads, there's probably four or five different versions that we have running at any given time. Right. With maybe a different headline at the start, maybe a different subtitle. It just depends on what it is. But we can kind of target it based off of what the different audience profiles are from our segmentation. And from that, you can kind of pair it with receipt data from larger, you know, panel organizations like a numerator or an IRI or that sort of thing, to kind of really be able to determine household penetration, any sort of increase in household sales. And that's very directional for us. It's definitely not bulletproof sort of way of actually analyzing the performance, but it at least gives us kind of a directional idea of how things are going. And this one, again, comparatively to some of the other things we've run throughout the year, you know, performed at the highest level.

[Eric Dick]

I'm on your YouTube channel right now, and I don't know what you guys do on YouTube. Just from our. We've actually just started on @D2C, just starting to promote our podcasts on YouTube. And we're seeing extraordinary results. Like, we're seeing extra, like, we're seeing like extremely cheap views and. And long views. And so we're trying to suss it out right now to see what it actually is. But that might be. You guys may already do that, but. But I feel like there's a real opportunity on YouTube for. Especially for creative. That's as high quality as what you guys are producing that are entertaining and an ad at the same time.

[Taylor Berry]

Yeah, and YouTube is a fun one. We definitely do well, we do a lot of YouTube advertising, but it's very contextually based. And I think each one of these vignettes, and again, now that there's eight of them, you can target them based off of what someone is viewing or what they're interested in. And then when you kind of go on the other opposite side of the spectrum, where it's more of like a cocktail focused campaign, you know, we're actually driving some sort of Recipe, which we also have a ton of fun with. And there's infinite possibilities of how you can name a cocktail based off of like an everyday situation. You know, kind of pairing those two things together in a very contextual manner with YouTube has been, has been awesome for us as well.

[Eric Dick]

You mentioned a little bit in the, in our pre talk there about in person events and I think that's a big priority for a lot of brands that we talk to to. You were talking a little bit about how the spokescart can be sort of like an in person experience as well. What are some of the things you have planned for in person events with brands like Tito's?

[Taylor Berry]

Yes, it's the spokescart that's in the ad was actually developed by a few of the people that worked on the original R2D2. So which is. It's royalty. Yeah, pretty cool. And it's got, it's got kind of some of the same sort of, you know, personality quirks as R2D2 has. But in my opinion, the one that we shoot with kind of belongs in a museum. It doesn't belong kind of out there in the real world. And so we, we've over the past couple of months actually worked on making replicas of the spokescart that you see in the actual commercials. And it works just the same as it does in the commercial. It also again, it kind of gives you the ability to customize it for any sort of event. So if ostensibly if we want to put a T shirt cannon in it, we, we could. But you know, again, you kind of see the possibilities of, of this roaming bar cart that's controlled by somebody out of out of view with just a remote control and just providing a little bit of that surprise and delight to consumers. We do a lot of of music festivals around the United States and we just see that there's a lot of opportunity there even just to hand out, you know, if it's not making a cocktail, if we can't do that in kind of the GA presence, it's handing out bandanas or that sort of thing. You know, I think getting it into situations that are culturally relevant, you know, through any of our given sponsorships where, you know, getting that sort of, you know, user generated content of this thing, surprising, delighting consumers. That's where I kind of see some of the future of this going, right, is actually making it a character that people can actually interact with in real life and then also utilizing, you know, those replicas that we've made in our organic social. Right in those kind of everyday, even office situations, you know, you can imagine working at Tito's is a pretty fun office environment. And you know, we can play around with it in a myriad of different ways. And so I think, I think it'll be now that we kind of have the footing with the entire kind of ad campaign, expanding it beyond that right? Into kind of some earned media situations and in real life situations with all of the events that we do across the country is going to be, I think, the next unlock for us.

[Eric Dick]

Super cool. Yeah. What like in just in general with, with the brand, like, I guess you guys are your number one. The question that keeps coming to mind for me is like, how hard has it been to fend off the idea that you do have to make a bunch of flavored vodkas? Because I feel like every competitor out there is making a bunch of flavored vodkas and you guys have really stuck to your guns. Has that been an internal struggle or has it just been a non starter because of Tito's vision?

[Taylor Berry]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's almost a point of pride at this point. Right. Like, and again, I think that goes back to being an independent company right there. We have license to make those sorts of decisions without having to kind of appease any sort of of, you know, outside investors or anything like that. And so the whole ethos of this is like, do something. If you're going to do it well, do it, do it great. Right? And we don't have the need to go and expand and iterate and have a innovation pipeline. Of course there's been times where you're like, it's enticing to do that, right? But flavors go in and out of style, right? There was time when like whipped cream flavored vodka was a big thing, or you know, then you go into like mangoes and you know, herbs and all these different things, right? And, and the staying power of Tito's, I think is what's, what makes it so special, right? It's, it's, it's that it is, it's come as you are. It is what it is. It doesn't change. And it's just, it's here for you, right? It's here when you need something. And you know, if you want to have a good cocktail, you just reach for that, right? And we also believe, you know, I don't know if you've ever tried an infusion, but just throwing some fresh fruit into a bottle and letting it sit for a few hours, it's 10 out of 10. Right. And you're not getting any, like, artificial or even natural flavorings or anything like that. You're just kind of getting, like, the essence of, you know, whatever you're putting in there.

[Eric Dick]

Well, Taylor, I want to thank you for coming on the DTC podcast today. If you are in our audience, then you, especially in the States, you got to be on the lookout for this roving, autonomous, you know, spokescart, and let us know about your experience. This was a lot of fun. Taylor, thanks for coming on.

[Taylor Berry]

Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much, Eric. Really appreciate it.

[Eric Dick]

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now @directtoconsumeralloneword.co. i'm Eric Dick, and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.