As the founding partner of a booze-free spirits brand, it’s heretical for Marcus Sakey to say the following: “Don’t do Dry January.”
And yet, the Chicago-based entrepreneur stands by the message, with its obvious nod to the iconic Patagonia “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign. To be clear, Sakey wants American consumers to snap up his Ritual gin, tequila, rum, whiskey and aperitif alternatives—he’d just much rather have a year-round customer than a one-and-done trend follower.
“We’ve always had a simple, non-proscriptive approach, saying, ‘Hey give it a try, and incorporate it the way that works best for you,’” said Sakey, who has grown the five-year-old brand to a 26.4% market share of the non-alcoholic spirits segment. “Dry January is a great moment to take a breather and be conscious, but we’re not telling anyone how to live.”
Sakey’s strategy, reflected in Ritual’s social posts and other communications, acknowledges that the vast majority of Americans who buy NA products also still drink alcohol. Call it zebra striping or any other name that describes toggling back and forth between booze and booze-free, but 94% of that demo buys beverages from both categories, per a September report from NIQ.
A record number of Americans, 27%, said they’re “highly likely” to take part in 2024’s Dry January challenge, according to CivicScience, up from 2023’s 24%, although the follow-through group is much smaller. (OnePoll found that most people don’t make it past 10 days of teetotaling).
With those stats in mind—and adopting a more humane, less strident tone than typical “new year, new you” mandates—marketing in the NA space increasingly nods to what most participants already knew: It’s not Dry January. It’s Damp January.
Beer me?
Evidence ranges from Ritual’s influencer content and Instagram feed—tagline: “Don’t go dry, go zero proof”—to Blue Moon‘s offer of a free six-pack of its flagship beer to those who buy the just-launched NA Belgian White product from the Molson Coors lineup.
Sunnyside, a popular mindful drinking application, is hosting “Dry(ish) January” to inspire moderation as opposed to all or nothing. Per the company, participants can choose their own adventure, cutting out booze on weekdays, for instance, or slashing their overall consumption, tracking their progress on its digital platform. The tech touts its judgment-free, no-finger-wagging vibe.
And in a cheeky stunt, Miller Lite dropped a $5 tin of Beer Mints to satisfy the brew cravings for those forgoing the pub this month. Reviews of the limited-time candy haven’t been kind, saying that it tastes like neither beer nor mint, but word is still out on whether it has a placebo effect.
While some brands in the nascent NA industry launched with niche audiences in mind—sober and religious communities, pregnant women—the demand has become “so much bigger than any of us knew,” according to Maggie Taittinger, co-founder of French Bloom, a line of premium NA sparkling wines available in 28 countries.
“At least 80% of people are what we call flexible drinkers,” who straddle the booze and NA worlds this month and beyond, Taittinger told Adweek.“And just because somebody drinks alcohol doesn’t mean they necessarily want to drink on every occasion.”
Messaging has evolved to target that massive addressable audience, said Taittinger, who noted a concurrent shift: There’s less emphasis on health benefits and more on an everyone’s-invited-to-the-party theme. (Younger demos, by the way, are drinking less alcohol than at any other time in history, per Gallup.)
“The wellness piece appealed to millennials, but there’s more interest from Generation Z in NA brands’ ability to bring people together,” Taittinger said. “The dry-ish culture is more inclusive, with a focus on conviviality.”
California-based Best Day Brewing, recently singled out as an India pale ale to love by the Los Angeles Times, believes in being merciful, especially given that “the majority of people fail on their New Year’s resolutions by the middle of the month,” said Jim Gunning, the brand’s chief marketing officer.
“We have always taken a stance of personal choice around moderation versus abstinence,” Gunning told Adweek. “You will never get a feeling of guilt from Best Day for having a full-strength beer with your friends at après-ski on Jan. 20.”
‘Cultural conversation’
As the sober curious movement continues to pick up steam, Dry January is a focal point for those taking a self-imposed break from booze, helping to push the industry to more than $500 million in U.S. sales, not including bars and restaurants, according to Nielsen IQ. The researcher dubbed NA the fastest-growing segment in beverages, with a 31% bump in 2023, while a Drizly report saw NA spirits’ share of sales up 600% year over year.
For building category awareness, Dry January is “an absolute godsend,” said Sakey, whose Diageo-backed brand recently smashed previous records on the busiest day of the year, Jan. 7, with a bottle of Ritual sold every 37 seconds, via ecommerce alone.
Mindful imbibing is now “part of the cultural conversation,” said Sakey, who skips the challenge himself. “Every year’s Dry January is another high water mark, which becomes the new baseline.”
Although dwarfed by “Big Alcohol’s” $250 billion in annual sales, the NA segment—featuring brands like Athletic Brewing, Surely, Proxies and Free Spirits— is expected to blossom from its current 0.4% share of that market to 4% by 2027 and 10% to 12% in the next decade, per IWSR.
The category is being taken seriously these days, with retailers hiring dedicated buyers, offering in-store promotions and sampling and bulking up their displays with multiple brands and prime placement.
Booze-free ‘Super Bowl’
There has been an explosion of brands and products—a 2024 shakeout is inevitable, per industry watchers—with expanded distribution in supermarkets, big box stores, sports stadiums, music festivals, restaurants and elsewhere. Surely NA wines are now sold in Target, Ritual has a Walmart deal and Best Day Brewing is served on Alaska Airlines, to name just a few of the new alliances.
Meanwhile, its marketing gets more aggressive and visible. Seedlip—a pioneer in NA spirits, which sold a majority stake to Diageo in 2019—recently launched its first new product in four years, a tequila-inspired drink called Notas de Agave.
As part of the rollout, the brand created a tropical-themed popup called the Seedlip Oasis, which will dispense free cocktails in New York’s Gansevoort Plaza Jan. 26 and 27. The activation goes hand-in-hand with a new ad starring actor Regé-Jean Page, a continuation of the “Choose Different” campaign that dropped during last fall’s Sober October.
“We like to think of non-alc as a year-round proposition, but January is certainly our Super Bowl,” Nicholas Rowland, Seedlip’s senior marketing manager, told Adweek. “The cultural phenomenon of people using January as a month for moderation shows no signs of stopping, so it’s important for us to be top of mind during this period, particularly with how saturated the category is becoming.”
As is true for its competitors, Seedlip’s fans “drink regular-strength beer, wine and spirits, but also non-alc options,” Rowland said. “So our messaging aims to speak to a wide variety of people—we’re ruthlessly focused on being an inclusive proposition.”
