818 Tequila looks to ‘democratize’ the influencer experience

It’s not every day that Kendall Jenner shows up on your doorstep. But for one group of housemates in Arizona, that day came in September.

Last month, a video of Jenner appearing on a Ring camera at the residence of a group of students and alumni at Arizona State University, and posing in their bedrooms once let in, went viral on TikTok. It was part of Jenner’s tequila brand 818’s College Bar Tour, where she and the brand travel to campuses across the country to reach 21+ Gen Z drinkers.

While the surprise visit from Jenner was planned, 818 CMO Kathleen Braine told us the video itself was not.

“They genuinely had no idea that Kendall was coming, because when we got to that woman’s house, she was the only person there of her four roommates,” Braine said. “We literally woke her up from sleeping, and everyone’s calling her because I guess everyone has the [Ring] app on their phone…They were like, ‘Answer the door! Answer the door!’”

In the last year, 818 has shown up at colleges in the Midwest, the South, and the Southeast as part of the College Bar Tour, and Braine said each time it generates “more virality”—and more calls, via DMs and comments, to come to additional campuses.

She said the tour is “a continuation of [the brand’s] broader strategy of giving everyday consumers the influencer experience,” creating post-worthy events for 21+ Gen Zs and millennials and helping 818 compete with larger alcohol brands through social media.

“A lot of brands are looking at experiential marketing through the lens of only inviting influencers and how they can sort of amplify their brand that way,” she said. “We also want to make sure that we’re driving liquid to lips and sampling and awareness with our consumers, who may not be influencers, but who may be just normal seniors in college or postgrad students.”

Back to school

How does 818 aim to give normal people the influencer experience? For one, Braine said, the brand keeps its activations “essentially open to the public.” At its 818 Outpost activation at Coachella, where the brand has been for the last three years since going live, it hosted influencers and VIPs but also opened up this year’s activation to people on social media to be able to register and attend.

And show up they did. According to 818, more than 1,000 tickets were reserved in the first 15 minutes of the event being live, and the event generated more than 1.3 billion social impressions.

“It’s a democratization and a way to make customers feel special,” she said.

For the College Bar Tour, 818 has hosted 21+ events in college bars and at pregames with brand ambassadors, and has sent Jenner door-to-door to thank fans in person with gifts of tequila and merch from its Alumni Collection. According to Braine, the merch was designed to appeal to elder Gen Zs and millennials by showing that “the magic moments in college don’t have to just be in college.”

Keep it real

Braine said her team has “worked to create a brand that stands alone” outside of Jenner’s celebrity status and has thought strategically about when to engage her publicly. While she was not present at the brand’s Coachella outpost, she’s been on the ground during the College Bar Tour serving up drinks at bars and surprising customers, which has proven to be a success—at least given the results it’s seen online: Across platforms, the latest College Bar Tour has racked up more than 45,000 social mentions, 80 million social interactions, 1.5 billion social impressions, and 1,500 DMs “about where to go next,” according to 818.

TikTok now allows alcohol brands and advertisers to show up officially on the platform, but 818 does not have an active account. Still, Braine said, it’s reaping the benefits of the platform even beyond last month’s viral video.

“Even without our own owned TikTok platform handle, we are the most talked-about tequila on TikTok,” she said. “At the moment, as it’s very, very new, the opening up of alcohol [brands] being permitted to use TikTok, we are taking a wait-and-see approach.”

Braine said future events from the brand will continue to center on meeting and interacting with its Gen Z and millennial audience, whether that’s another tour or offering drink specials at a local bar.

“That highly local touch and making sure that we are where our consumers are and where our fans and consumers are enjoying themselves is really important,” she said.