{"id":21242,"date":"2026-11-06T01:02:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T06:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/advertisingweek.com\/aw360\/?p=21242"},"modified":"2026-11-02T12:07:36","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T17:07:36","slug":"big-spirits-brands-make-smaller-ones-invisible-to-customers-and-creativity-alone-wont-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/advertisingweek.com\/aw360\/news\/big-spirits-brands-make-smaller-ones-invisible-to-customers-and-creativity-alone-wont-help\/21242\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Spirits Brands Make Smaller Ones Invisible to Customers. And Creativity Alone Won\u2019t Help"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By JP Summers,<\/a> Partner, Strategy, Five Cherries<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not often that you see marketing for a craft or small-batch spirits brands these days. Now, imagine how it must feel to be<\/em> a small spirits brand, spending plenty of marketing dollars but never earning the type of visibility or customer awareness that major brands do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just a creative problem. Smart, compelling marketing isn\u2019t enough to break through anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real issue is that a \u201cbrand presence gap\u201d makes meaningful visibility for new brands extremely difficult. Larger competitors have a huge advantage, both in spending<\/a> and in the amount of cultural saturation<\/a> they\u2019ve achieved over years (or often decades) of marketing. It\u2019s a deficit that many new brands just can\u2019t overcome, especially in that split second before a customer chooses a drink at their favorite bar. There are bartender programs, in-bar initiatives, incentives and other tactics to give new spirits a fighting chance, but at the end of the day, the only way a brand can win at the point of purchase is having an undeniable amount of top-of-mind awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s impossible to break through. It just takes a better understanding of the challenge so that marketing efforts can be planned and executed to accomplish a more meaningful KPI than lower-funnel optimization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minding the gap<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Overcoming this \u201cbrand presence gap\u201d wasn\u2019t always the level of challenge it is now \u2013 where instead of a David versus Goliath competitive environment, it\u2019s now David versus 10 Goliaths. It took Annheuser-Busch, Molson-Coors, Constellation, Diageo, Pernod-Ricard, Beam-Suntory, and others buying up the smaller brands, spending to make their big brands unavoidable and erasing the ability for anyone to come in with a modest media spend and make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital marketing also exacerbated the issue by allowing everything to become pay-to-play. Theoretically, it should have made it easier for smaller brands to get their messaging out there more widely. But the reality is more stark, with big brands out-spending all others to such a degree that even small brands with decent marketing budgets get drowned out. This heavy spending also continues to drive up ad rates, making the whole environment more expensive to compete in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wealth of performance data enabled by digital marketing also came with downsides. More data should<\/em> mean better optimization, particularly for newcomers who need optimization most. But the reality is that, in the rush for sales, brands have stopped seeing the forest for the trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not that channel-specific KPIs are wrong, but hyper-focusing on the narrow end of performance ignores the bigger picture of what actually works<\/em>. Instead, new and smaller spirit brands need to invest in a full-funnel marketing system that doesn\u2019t just optimize at the bottom end. Attention-winning creative will only get you so far. You need the right kind of investments across the funnel, with a mix of traditional and non-traditional applications. Here\u2019s where to start:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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