Dive Brief:
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Strong-drink makers often strong arm customers to mix with the drink-makers own choice of mixer – even insisting that they do so, according to The New York Times.
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Several manufacturers have taken this tactic, including Goslings, which has a rum and ginger beer brand tailor-made for making the brand's signature Dark 'n' Stormy cocktail. Russian vodka maker Stolichnaya started putting its name on a ginger beer brand in 2014, and Gin Mare, a Spanish distillation, makes a branded tonic water.
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Gin Mare's tonic isn't intended just for G&Ts, Juan Carlos Maroto, the global marketing director of Vantgard, which owns both Gin Mare and its 1724 tonic, told The New York Times. Their tonic was made to “have a wider versatility, to have it mix with pisco, cachaca, mezcal and tequilas.”
Dive Insight:
It's one thing to want to maintain “ownership” of a liquor brand. But subtly dictating how consumers should drink it and what they can mix it with strikes of pushing the spirit bottle a bit too far.
What's next? Will Birds Eye insinuate consumers can only mix their peas with their carrots? Will Wal-Mart launch a campaign saying if consumers want to make a chocolate milk or shake with their milk, they should use Hershey's chocolate? Such brand extensions are, both in principal and in practice, absurd.
No one's better at brand extending than the fast food industry. When consumers order drinks, the restaurant locks them into a (contracted) soda brand. After also buying the “unique” burger or “specially-spiced” wings, restaurants want to sell consumers ice cream from a different brand.
When consumers are mixing together food items at home, they can more easily ignore brand-extension marketing. But it could be different for alcoholic beverages, especially because consumers may be interested in a specific drink. They could believe that a company's branded mixers are specially formulated for the cocktail in question — like Goslings Ginger Beer for a Dark 'n' Stormy.