If Gen Z isn’t drinking spirits, could they still be collecting them? One marketer thinks so, and that brands are sleeping on an opportunity to tell their stories in a new way. “There's a generational shift of how wealth works and there's a distrust in the traditional ways of doing it,” said Hamish Campbell, VP executive creative director of Denomination, a global drinks branding agency that has worked with brands like Snoop’s 19 Crimes Wines and Messi’s Más+. What he means is that the kids aren’t looking at stocks, nor are they pouring extravagant cognac in cigar rooms to impress their guests. Instead, they’re shifting towards long-term ownership in wine and spirits – focusing on enhancing assets during their lifetime, possibly with the goal of passing them on to future generations. In what’s seemingly in contrast to their consumption habits, Gen Z and millennial investors are increasingly exploring alcoholic collectables, with 36% now interested in the opportunity, according to a study by Bank of America, making it one of the most popular categories among younger collectors behind watches and cars. As we know, Gen Z and millennials are leading the moderation movement, and that’s making spirits more of a commodity than a beverage to enjoy or a status symbol, said Campbell. In that sense, this is different from the whiskey or wine aficionado collection. It’s more like how millennials are already well practiced at scoring and selling limited edition sneakers (my ex-boyfriends’ Air Jordan collections have bested my shoe collection). Many luxury sneakers have embraced that with blockchain technology – for kicks but also for traceability. There’s been some action between luxury spirits and Web3, but not much: Patrón released reserves that could be stored or traded on an NFT platform, Hennessy created a Web3 community and released first and last bottles of a rare limited edition, Karuizawa has sold decades-old bottles from the shuttered distillery on BlockBar. Like in fashion, we’ve seen spirits brands embrace the limited edition luxury drop but not necessarily take cues from watches or vintage cars, where the history and the storytelling of who owned them is almost just as important as the quality of the actual piece itself. Rolex, for example, has embraced in its messaging that it is a brand passed down through generations, serial numbers are traceable, with the website featuring the opportunity to buy and sell vintage pieces (thinking I should also trade up to luxury watch-collecting boyfriends). This isn’t an approach for every brand, but as the audience for spirits possibly gets smaller, the overarching question is how do spirits engage people in different ways? Maybe it’s through a well-crafted product with a storied history, and even if the buyer is not drinking, they’re at least building a relationship with it for a moment of time. |
