Moving cases regardless of alcohol bases
Plus: Ways to [shudder] “add value”!
You may have heard the news that someone named Erika Ayers Badan is slated to keynote the National Beer Wholesalers Association’s annual convention in San Diego this fall. Badan is the chief executive of Food52, a lovely website that’s sort of like Williams-Sonoma for Millennials that refuse to pay for the NYT Cooking app. What #business #insights could the head of a publication that hawks $25 egg timers and and frozen pizza rankings possibly have to offer roomful of beer distributors? So glad you asked.
Prior to Food52, Badan was the chief executive of Barstool Sports, a media conglomerate whose business model monetizing the nation’s bros with reactionary politics, boorish clickbait, and gambling promotions has catapulted it to a nine-figure valuation. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups, et cetera. Crucially, wine-and-spirits-and-Montucky Cold Snacks behemoth Gallo has had some sort of “innovative media partnership” to promote High Noon Sun Sips with Barstool Sports since at least 2020.1 Thus, the NBWA’s release in late July announcing her keynote promised attendees her “unique perspectives on building brand loyalty and lasting success in business.”
In this era of “total beverage,” I can grasp the logic of the trade group’s choice to book Badan. The juggernaut vodka seltzer’s ascent to the top of the American spirits sales charts—not just spirits-based canned cocktails, mind you, but spirits overall—is extremely relevant to wholesalers looking to move cases, regardless of their alcohol bases. Badan had an indirect hand in its marketing.2 Ipso facto! But while we’re on the subject of “lasting success in business,” I’d be remiss not to note her place of employment prior to Barstool Sports: America Online. The hulking monument to corporate Web 1.0 hubris was already doomed by the time Badan (then named Erika Nardini) arrived as its ad division’s chief marketing officer in 2013, so that’s not on her. But Badan’s full-throated endorsement of AOL’s “digital prophet,” one of the most on-the-nose avatars of “Emperor Has No Clothes”-style corporate grifting that American media has ever seen, is definitely fair game.