How Josh Cellars is responding to all those memes

Like an elementary school classroom in the ’90s, X was full of Joshes last week.

The social memes, which focused on Josh Cellars’s wine, took off like wildfire and consisted of everything from puns to lyrics and jokes about the approachably named wine. At one point, someone joked that Josh’s marketing team was probably as hyped up as NASA was when the Curiosity rover landed on Mars.

Dan Kleinman, chief brand officer at Josh Cellars’s parent company, Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, confirmed that the team was, in fact, thrilled, but it wasn’t a group of men who were celebrating: “Our team is a collection of incredible women that are driving the success of this brand and responding and having all the fun with this,” he said.

While January tends to be a quiet period for the alcohol industry with post-holiday cutbacks and Dry January, Kleinman said Josh had a great start to the year. In the two weeks since the memes began circulating, the brand saw a 79% increase in Instagram and Facebook followers, and sales are up 6.2% compared to the 11 weeks prior.

Even for an established brand, Kleinman said the online attention has also been great for brand exposure to new customers and generating brand affinity.

“I think what these memes are doing, especially because so many of them are positive, is creating valuable social credibility for the brand,” he said. “Friend-to-friend recommendations and recommendations from real people versus advertising is an incredible way to get people interested.”

Can’t meme ’em, join ’em

After the memes began circulating, Josh Cellars worked with its social agency, Tombras, to post about it on Instagram and returned to X, where it hadn’t posted since 2019. Kleinman said that the viral moment inspired the brand to get back on the platform, where it’s since interacted with Wendy’s, which posted about a Josh meme, and hopped onto other trends.

Prior to this, Kleinman said the brand had put the most effort behind paid and organic content on Instagram and Facebook to drive brand growth and volume uplift.

“Seeing this pop on Twitter has flipped our perspective,” he said. “We’re obviously in the conversation right now in a relevant way, and I think we’ve got to make sure we have a content strategy for the long term that keeps us relevant for that platform.”

In the next year, he said Josh will look to potentially expand its presence to other platforms like TikTok as well.

Big picture, Kleinman said the plan is to let “the true creators drive the content” and respond, rather than try to steer the ship: “Most of what we’re doing is finding ways to comment on what other people do versus trying to create memes of our own,” he said. “We think that’s the more natural and organic way to pay homage and show people that we’re actually loving what they’re doing, good or bad.”

While it can feel risky, Kleinman said he would encourage other brands to embrace organic, viral moments and “find a way that you can enter the conversation that naturally fits into what’s already happening.”

As for whether inspiration was gleaned from some of the memes and collabs with other wines with human names, like Justin, are on the way? Well…don’t hold your breath.

“We wouldn’t go out with Justin because they’re a competitor, but we’re looking for collabs with other brands and other humans that have been swept up in this meme culture and see if we can have a little bit of fun with them, to keep the conversation going,” he said.