Snoop Dogg’s Gin Indoggo Bottles His Persona

Snoop Dogg's ever-expanding array of consumer products now includes a gin for people who share his taste for the botanical spirit. Specifically, his Indoggo is for drinkers who would prefer a little less juniper, the essential ingredient that unites all spirits called gin. Snoop has had marketing deals with Corona beer and Bic lighters (in keeping with his personal brand, in one ad for Bic, Snoop jokingly asks Martha Stewart to share a bowl), and has made substantial investments in the cannabis industry. His venture capital firm, Casa Verde Capital, just raised $4 million in Seed money for Surfside, an end-to-end marketing platform for the cannabis industry. He even released his own rosé wine. He began working with distiller Trusted Spirits last year to produce Indoggo. Snoop’s involvement with the gin is a bit different from his involvement with other products. With Indoggo, Snoop has moved from pitchman to active participant in a brand that directly leverages his own image and style. According to Marc Weisberg, one of Trusted Spirit’s co-owners, it’s working. “We are 10 months in since our launch,” Weisberg said when he spoke to Adweek. “And are projecting to sell upwards of 75,000 9-liter equivalent cases in the first 12 months following our launch.” Every Celebrity Has an Alcohol Brand—but What Spells Success? By partnering with a spirits brand Snoop has entered the ballooning ranks of other celebrity-cum-spirits entrepreneurs. The current trend can be traced back to George Clooney, who co-founded Casamigos tequila in 2013 and sold it four years later to alcohol conglomerate Diageo for $1 billion. Months after that deal, Ryan Reynolds acquired Aviation Gin, which Diageo bought in a deal worth up to $610 million in August 2020. The celeb spirit salespeople list also includes rapper Travis Scott, who partnered with Anheuser-Busch from the get-go on the new agave-based hard seltzer, Cacti. Jay-Z, Jamie Foxx, LeBron James, Drew Barrymore and Post Malone are also big names who are lined up on liquor store shelves. Bottling Snoop Dogg’s taste and style Founded in 2018 by Keenan Towns and Marc Weisberg, who share the titles of co-founder and co-CEO, Trusted Spirits is, in the words of Weisberg, “designed to be a platform company to develop and acquire brands.” Indoggo is Trusted Spirit's first product, and both Snoop and the company Prestige Beverage Group are equity partners. According to Weisberg, Snoop was involved in developing the flavor profile of the gin, while Prestige Beverage Group provides operational expertise and marketing support. This was also not simply a cash investment, Weisberg is careful to note; the partnership with Prestige includes managerial commitments on both sides. The partnership between Weisberg and Towns was born from a chance meeting at Club Macanudo, a cigar bar on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Weisberg, noticing Towns craning his neck from a poorly placed seat to watch a playoff game, invited him to sit at his own table. After chatting for a while they exchanged contact info, and later the friendship was solidified when Towns offered to connect Weisberg’s daughter (an actress, writer and producer in Los Angeles) with a celebrity he declines to name. While Weisberg handles Trusted Spirits’ intellectual property licensing and protection, corporate structure and operations aspects such as production materials sourcing, celebrity connections is one of Towns’ professional specialties. When he met Weisberg he was a brand manager at Diageo, and was responsible for managing brands like Ciroc Vodka, which famously raised its profile by bringing on rapper Sean “P. Diddy” Combs as a spokesperson. Towns was also brand manager for Tanqueray Gin; it was during a campaign for that brand that Towns first worked with Snoop Dogg. Hesitancy, then a hit Partnering with Snoop was considered something of a gamble by Diageo, according to Towns. “At that time, Snoop had really changed his persona from those early days. But in [Diageo’s] eyes, he was still the ‘gangsta Snoop Dogg,’ with the gangsta rap lyrics,” said Towns. Diageo’s initial campaign with Snoop was limited to a few social media posts over the course of one year and an appearance at a sales conference. The sales conference was where Towns saw the true potential for working with Snoop, who captivated a room of 1,000, about 400-to-500 of whom were sales representatives. “He was so charismatic,” Towns recalled. “He was on time, he was so on script and he got everybody pumped. And then he DJ-ed after the awards ceremony and people sang every single word of every song. And this was a room full of middle-aged white people.” “What I found was that the distributor folks, our sales teams and our retailers, were all in love with Snoop,” Towns said. “And it really wasn’t about hip-hop, it wasn’t so much about the music. It was just him as a personality.” It’s that elusive element—sheer, electric, compelling personality—that brands are looking for when they partner with celebrities. With Snoop Dogg, Weisberg and Towns have found something more, though, in that Indoggo is intrinsically tied to Snoop Dogg’s professional persona. Avoiding tradition—and juniper Snoop guided them toward a spirit that was fruit-forward (the gin is strawberry-flavored) and low sugar, Weisberg said. Interestingly for gin aficionados, Snoop eschewed having a strong juniper flavor—he personally dislikes it. The name of the brand incorporates the double-g spelling of Snoop Dogg’s name, and is connected to the color of the bottle, the branding palette and Snoop’s personal color preferences. Indoggo’s purple is similar to the color Snoop paints his cars and to the artwork he’s had on some of his albums. It aligns with his famed Lakers fandom. It is, in short, pure Snoop. After Jay-Z invested in the champagne brande Armand de Brignac (also known as “Ace of Spades”) he began incorporating the bottles into his music videos. Snoop Dogg emulates this: in the music video for the track “CEO" Indoggo is prominently featured. Towns said that Snoop Dogg has also incorporated lyrics about the brand in the tracks "Don't Text Don't Call,” "Indoggo” and "No Half-Steppin." The brand integration also occurs during live performances. “We try to piggyback off of things he’s already integrated into,” Towns said. “If he’s DJ-ing or performing, at any of those shows we want to be integrated into the actual set of his music. When he performs 'Gin and Juice' we try to have the Indoggo bottle imagery on the back screen. He’ll usually give a big shout out right before he does the song and tell everybody I have a new gin...and then he’ll do [the track] 'Gin and Juice'.” Indoggo is Trusted Spirit's first brand. Because of Snoop Dogg's hands-on involvement, it's likely that this light-on-juniper gin can help propel the company toward success. Alcohol-Free Wine Brand Starla Channels Gucci, Not Sonoma, for Its First Ad Campaign