How Josh Cellars’ viral meme is driving wine sales among Gen Z

Until last week, Josh Cellars hadn’t made a post on X (formerly Twitter) in almost five years. But when an outpouring of memes about the brand—largely poking fun at the juxtaposition between its seemingly mundane name and the elegant cursive script of its logo—began to sweep across the platform earlier this month, the winery sought to get in on the joke. “Our first move was really to kind of lean into the meme culture and post some of our own,” said Dan Kleinman, chief brand officer at Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, the parent company of Josh Cellars. “As soon as we got back up and running on Twitter as fast as we could, we started engaging and thanking those who were posting such creative memes. It was really about us showing a new side of our brand, which is kind of our more convivial side, and having a lot of fun with other brands and some of these great meme content creators.” Josh found itself suddenly thrust into the internet spotlight roughly two weeks ago after X user @OptimusGrind__ shared a photo of himself holding a bottle of Josh wine captioned “I’m not gonna keep telling y’all to grow up and leave that Stella & Barefoot alone.” Other X users, amused by his assertion that Josh Cellars’ wine was a classier, more refined choice than other brands in the same low-cost price range, began responding to the original post with plays on its name, from “last night we let the josh talk” to “she thought I was Drake the way I’m always sippin on that Josh” (a reference to the Nickelodeon series “Drake & Josh.”) The 17-year-old wine brand was, in fact, named Josh Cellars as a tribute by its founder, Joseph Carr, to his father. last night we let the josh talk https://t.co/Vpv2ir5Uy0— Florian Rochestie, M.D. (@eggeatingunit) January 9, 2024 The trend soon mutated far beyond that original post, which has since racked up over 20 million views on X. Users started placing the name “Josh” in existing meme formats, jokingly speculating on the origin of the brand’s name and playing up the “sophistication” of drinking Josh Cellars’ wine. josh wine on a friday night, pair of jeans that fit just right pic.twitter.com/0rf8p7WAlp— horse dentist (@equine__dentist) January 12, 2024 pic.twitter.com/Ite5Z4haN4— ppigg (@s4m31p4n) January 13, 2024 Sales boost The trend has had far greater consequences for Josh Cellars than it simply being included in a plethora of memes across social media. The largely millennial and Gen Z consumers participating in the trend—or simply scrolling through the influx of posts about the brand—also started purchasing the wine, with some even sharing photos of their shopping basket filled with Josh Cellars’ wines or a glass of it held in their hand. Though many of them were already familiar with Josh Cellars, the memes have also led a number of younger consumers to discover the brand, Kleinman said. “People getting into the brand for the first time is probably what shocked us most,” he said. “We saw so many people making memes around going to the store to pick [a bottle] up … And if you look at what we’re doing now, we’re trying to balance engaging with our existing audience as well as this new audience that we’re building.” The trend is already driving tangible benefits for Josh Cellars. Kleinman said that in the first week the memes took off, the company saw a 5 percentage point increase in sales volume, according to Circana, which provides consumer behavior data. “We’re in the middle of dry January, and when you see a wine brand popping at 20% and adding five points of growth in a week, it’s pretty substantial,” he said. More news: Read about this year’s Dry January marketing And it seems to have had an impact on the local level in New York and Los Angeles, according to social media consultant Rachel Karten, who called 15 liquor stores across the two cities to see whether Josh was flying off their shelves. Three of the stores she contacted told her Josh Cellars’ wine is a “very popular wine for people in their 20s,” and had been even before the meme took off, and another four told Karten they had “definitely” seen a bump in Josh sales since the trend emerged. "I just got a new case of the cabernet because it's been selling so much!"For today's newsletter, I called 15 liquor stores to get a Josh wine weekend scene report. Here is what I heard.— Rachel Karten (@milkkarten) January 23, 2024 Since last week, when Josh Cellars’ agency, Tombras, alerted the brand to its role in the latest internet trend, Josh Cellars and its team at the agency have pivoted the brand’s social media strategy to shift their messaging approach “on Instagram and Twitter and lean into that conversation and type of content people really want,” Kleinman said. By “people,” he means the millennial and Gen Z consumers who have now become the “number one priority” in Josh Cellars’ marketing, he said. To appeal to these younger consumers, Josh Cellars and Tombras have focused on infusing humor into their responses to their favorite memes shared about the brand. For example, the brand coined the term “please josh responsibly,” which it’s used in its replies to posts such as, “we getting f*cked up on Josh tonight.” The brand has also bantered with other brands joining in on the Josh trend, including Wendy’s and Chipotle. spicy nugs probably pair well with prosecco https://t.co/vVqT709Ujl— Josh Cellars Wine (@joshcellars) January 19, 2024 Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Social boost So far, the new strategy seems to be working. Since the Josh trend began earlier this month, Josh Cellars has seen a 26% increase in its Instagram followers and a 10% jump in its X followers, Kleinman said. The brand’s online engagement has “skyrocketed” as well, he said, with its overall engagement across X and Instagram soaring 1,500%. “As we’ve pivoted, we’re seeing [social] is a great way to engage with even younger consumers than we’ve engaged with in the past,” Kleinman said. Super Bowl news: Brands focus on TikTok and downplay X Previously, Josh Cellars had largely focused its social strategy on the brand’s existing Gen X and Boomer customer base. “That is one of the big areas where wine needs to step up its game—recruiting [the younger] generation into the category … By pivoting, we feel this is an opportunity to bring even more younger drinkers into the brand.” Josh Cellars has also shared its own memes on Instagram and X, including one responding to a user telling the brand to “get a young person running your social media” by showing the brand passing a bottle of wine to its “new intern” (who Kleiman says is a real, new member of the brand’s team at Tombras). The brand also poked fun at its slightly delayed arrival to the trend, joking about how it took the brand a minute to hunt down its X password. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Josh Cellars Wine (@joshcellars) Kleinman and the brand plan to maintain their focus on engaging with the meme creators and Gen Z and millennial consumers more broadly, he said. The brand is in talks with several of the meme accounts on X and Instagram that have participated in the trend, which has been around for over two weeks at this point, and seeks to “partner with them to continue the conversation and the fun that folks are having with this moment,” Kleinman said. Launching on TikTok is also in the cards. Josh Cellars is just waiting for enough of TikTok’s userbase (at least 71%) to reach the legal drinking age to make it worth creating content there, he said. (According to Business of Apps, about 50% of TikTok users are over age 25, and 35% are between 18 and 24—so some of that group are 21+.) More: Top 5 brand TikToks to know about right now “We’ve certainly been following up with those folks to continue to find creative ways to continue the conversation,” Kleinman said. “And as the cultural conversation shifts, we feel we have the right, now, to have a voice in some of the areas of pop culture that we may not have chosen to speak about in the past.”

How Josh Cellars’ viral meme is driving wine sales among Gen Z

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