Is your booze brand suffering from category camouflage?

The Art & Science of Memorability

If my time working in the world of booze has taught me anything, it is this:

Most drinks brands do not have a quality problem. They have a visibility problem.

Every gin looks like an apothecary. Every beer looks like a craft workshop. Every wine looks like a heritage tour. Every no-low brand looks like a wellness retreat.

None of this is wrong. But when you look, sound and dress the same as everyone else, you do not get noticed. You get camouflaged.

And camouflage comes at a cost.

System1 alongside eatbigfish and Peter Field put a number on that invisibility recently. Their Cost of Dull research found that a dull food and drink campaign needs an extra £3.1m in annual media spend just to match the business effectiveness of the campaigns people actually talk about.

Let that sink in.

If your brand blends in, you are paying a fortune in extra media just to keep up with the brands brave enough to stand out.

Safe is not a strategy. It is a tax.

So what does the alternative look like?

The bravest brands break the camouflage.

Not randomly. Not just for fun. They break one expected code at a touchpoint people actually notice.

I call it The Unexpected. One of our Brand Memorability Hacks.

A set of creative levers for brands that know playing it safe is forgettable and being brave is more memorable.

Here is what that looks like.

1. Guinness made waiting feel epic.

Every beer ad was light, social, easy. Guinness turned the worst bit of their product — the 119-second wait — into surfers, white horses and cinema. That was 1999. People still talk about it.

2. Engine Gin became "the gin in the oil can."

Most gins dress themselves in botanicals and provenance. Engine borrowed from garages. It looks like motor oil. People never say the name first. They say "the gin in the oil can." One design decision did what years of advertising usually takes.

3. BuzzBallz put a cocktail in a ball.

Ready-to-drink cocktails come in cans, bottles and slim formats. BuzzBallz went round. A weird, grabby object that does the job years of brand-building usually takes. You do not remember the name. You remember the ball.

That's The Unexpected in action.

Three brands that broke one expected code in their category. And became impossible to ignore because of it.

Now ask yourself: what code is your brand still following simply because everyone else does?

If the answer is "the same one as everyone else," that is not a category problem. It is a bravery problem. The brands people remember broke one rule the rest were too comfortable to question.

Our programs help brands break the codes their category is too comfortable to question. Not just different. Memorable.