When describing the role of a modern-day marketer, Kathy Parker makes this analogy: “As a CMO you need to be a ringmaster of a 10-ring circus—because there are so many different channels you have to be able to navigate. You need to experiment but you also need to make sure you are driving the health and performance of the business.”

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For Parker—who is 20 months into her job as CMO of Grey Goose and Patron for spirits giant Bacardi Limited—that means balancing modern methods, like NFT drops, with tried-and-true ad plays, such as TV campaigns. It’s not one or the other, she suggests.

“TV is still the most successful way to recruit ... buyers of alcohol,” she said on the latest edition of the Marketers Brief podcast. “But we need to be experimenting and constantly driving opportunities to connect with consumers wherever they are.”

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For Grey Goose, recent experiments have included commissioning Peter Dundas to create a martini-shaped handbag decorated with 3,404 Swarovski crystals. The brand got Paris Hilton to wear it on the red carpet of the Grammys, which came on the heels of Grey Goose inking a multi-year sponsorship of the awards show. Then Grey Goose turned an image of the bag into an NFT with the token doubling as a ticket to a Fashion Week New York event featuring Dundas. The auction was handled by DressX, which specializes in meteverse fashion.

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The effort, which drew valuable free media from fashion outlets such as Vogue, is an example of how the spirits marketer’s NFT marketing approach is about a lot more than virtual goods. “We really do believe that there has to be something that can be consumed as well, so it is not only what lives as an NFT, it should turn into real life,” Parker said.

In January, Patron teamed with a wine and spirits NFT marketplace called BlockBar to launch an NFT featuring Chairman’s Reserve, a high-end Patron blend that it had never before released to the public. Buyers of the NFT got actual bottles of the blend—with only 150 individually numbered bottles for sale.

NFTs aside, Grey Goose and Patron are investing more in pure play in-person event marketing as pandemic restrictions ease.   

As Parker explains on the podcast, interest in mixology spiked during the early days of the pandemic as more people became amateur bartenders at home. Now that more drinkers are out and about, “they love the fact that  bartenders are recommending new cocktails, also giving them inspiration when they go home to recreate again.”

For liquor brands, that ups the ante on bartender outreach and creating events that raise interest in cocktail recipes that include their own brands. One of Patron’s recent plays seized on the rising popularity of Formula One. The brand hosted an event geared toward consumers, distributors and retailers during last weekend’s Miami Grand Prix. It also released a video starring Mexican F1 driver Sergio "Checo" Perez.

On the podcast, Parker also discusses the strategy behind Grey Goose’s new Essences variety, which has less alcohol than regular Grey Goose with zero carbs. “Over 50% of consumers now say they are drinking more mindfully,” she said. “This is not about turning away from alcohol by any means, it means that consumers just want choices.