Celebrity Booze Brands Are Everywhere –– Here’s How to Build One

The benefit of occupying the bottom rung of celebrity is climbing a tried and tested ladder. Now that every famous person has launched a celebrity liquor — from George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila, which sold for $700 million, to UFC President Dana White’s banana-flavored whiskey, Howler Head — all the systems were for me available to create my own.

Still, I wasn’t sure if the market was fully saturated enough to wade in. So I asked brand developer Steve Luttman how famous a person needs to be to launch a brand. A million social media followers as a baseline, he said, but there were workarounds. For example, he launched Hercules Mulligan, a rum-rye blend named after a war hero who has no social media presence because he died nearly 200 years ago. Steve also launched Bahnbrëcker Whiskey with country singer Randy Rogers, who is not a national star. “He has a very loyal following. He just needs to hit his most enthusiastic 1% to get the word out. The Rock, on the other hand, is like a TV show. In a week everyone will know Teremana.”

Eventually Steve agreed to work with me. “It’s such a crazy idea as a writer to launch a celebrity ghost that it might actually take off because people think it’s so stupid,” he said. I was glad I had achieved my first goal of making my businessman comfortable enough to poke fun at his celebrity partner.

The next step was the choice of spirits. We started with tequila, one of the top-selling drinks, but couldn’t get around the issue that I find it disgusting. I like aged rum, but Steve told me rum doesn’t sell. That’s when we came to rum-flavored tequila. Steve then brought in Lynn Haviland, a brand strategist and naming specialist, and designer Shaun O’Rourke. “With influencers, the bar for ‘celebrity’ changed,” Shaun said, proving I made him feel good too.

As she had done with other celebrities, Lynn conducted a stakeholder interview with me. “Why tequila?” she asked, so I told her about working on Lifetime’s american princess, where my coworkers urged me to attend their Tequila Thursdays. When we were done, I asked her how I was doing. “It’s not a test,” she said, in a tone I don’t think anyone has used with Ryan Reynolds after his stakeholder interview on Aviation Gin.

Lynn decided that Steve’s idea for a cinnamon-flavored tequila, like Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey, wouldn’t work with me as the face of the brand. I’m not going to college bars going “Shoot! Shot! Shot!” More importantly, the students don’t want me shouting “Guns!” in their bars. shots! shots!” scream. I’m a guy who wrote a book called In defense of elitism. We would need a craft bar liquor: around $50 a bottle, not $20.

Steve gave me a recipe for spiced rum (a cold infusion of cinnamon, vanilla, orange peel, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, star anise, and peppercorns) and told me to try it with mezcal. He imagined the liquor’s smokiness would match the spices of reflection. Also, mezcal was a faster-growing, cooler category.

Two days later I brought my homemade liquor to a dinner party where two guests were professional chefs. Both suggested I omit the cinnamon, which they found overwhelming, and instead go with the orange, which paired well with the smokiness of the mezcal. But they liked it. Even more surprising is I want it.

In the 1980’s my father worked in marketing for a large liquor importer, so I called him for advice. He stressed that I needed a “bar visit,” a simple cocktail with my brand, “like Smirnoff had the Moscow Mule,” he said. “They went to hip bars and had all these Moscow Mule girls with Russian outfits promoting them.” While I didn’t think that would work today for a number of reasons, the general rule seemed reasonable. So I called up bartender Ivy Mix, co-owner of Brooklyn’s Leyenda and author of Spirits from Latin America. Ivy had some concerns. “I think the celebrity agave spirits thing is a real shame. These celebs made tequila and mezcal status symbols and took away the importance of history and the people who make those products,” she said. Sure, I agreed. But would I like my status symbol? “Agave distillates have a long history of being infused, and they tend to be delicious,” she admitted.

A few weeks later, Lynn presented the team with a 30-page branding deck and sent us off to find at least 10 potential names. Our consensus winner was “Untitled by Joel Stein”. Next we looked at designs. The team vote went to one where the back of the bottle has my silhouette showing through the bottle. The slogan was a pun mocking my lack of prestige: “For the untitled class.”

Now that the team is talking about crowdfunding a launch of Untitled by Joel Stein, I asked another celebrity for tips. Bryan Cranston, who created Mezcal with his Dos Hombres breaking Bad Costar Aaron Paul, told me he, too, once disliked mezcal. But Paul took him to a mezcal bar and changed his mind. My feeling was that while this was a strong brand story, it wasn’t “bullied by Lifetime writers.”

Cranston also told me that I have to love my brand because it takes a lot of work to make a famous spirit. “If you’re doing something that you’re not passionate about, it’s a job. I don’t want a job, but I enjoy working on things I’m passionate about,” he said. “When I have a meeting for Dos Hombres, it’s like, ‘Ooh! Yes! We’re going to think about activation! We’re entering three more states! Awesome!'”

I began to worry that this might be true because Steve put me in touch with John Sean Fagan who might make my mezcal in Oaxaca, Mexico. He liked my infusion: “It’s like a little mezcal for breakfast, with an orange and some bacon. That’s how I start the day when I have nothing to do.” Apparently Untitled by Joel Stein casts a wide net.

Fagan explained that for a while I would have to come here for a few days every two months to taste test and meet the people who make it. “You’re the guy who’s going to run the operations,” he told me. He had recently had celebrity bail on her ghost when they realized how much time it would take. I would have to commit. “If you use Ryan Reynolds as a paradigm, no one will surpass Ryan Reynolds.”

Do I have the work ethic to make Untitled by Joel Stein big enough to sell to Diageo in five years? I didn’t even have the work ethic to become a successful magazine writer. But I’m brilliant at getting other people to work on my stupid ideas. I sold that thing in three years, no question.