This Dry January, Nonalcoholic Brands Scored Big Team-Ups

Katy Perry, armed with a feather duster, goes to work tidying a shelf of booze-free booze at a speciality retailer called Boisson. She also fusses over a window display filled with flowers, fruit and glassware on a table set for an upscale cocktail party.

While the famous pop singer playfully refers to herself as “the newest sales associate” in her Instagram post, Perry isn’t moonlighting at the store. Well, not exactly. 

She’s stumping for De Soi, the line of nonalcoholic aperitifs she founded with friend Morgan McLachlan last year, while promoting a Dry January collaboration that includes limited-edition product bundles and a ticket giveaway for her Las Vegas residency.

The combination of sleek boutique Boisson and superstar Perry, with her millions of followers on Instagram alone, shows how far the sober-curious movement has come in a few short years. Sales of nonalcoholic beverages are predicted to grow 31% by 2024, per IWSR, from the reported $3.3 billion in sales in 2021. Preliminary data from Drizly found a 56% increase in demand for the drinks this month over January 2022 and a 124% uptick from 2021, with spiritless spirits and wine growing in triple digits over that time period and beer’s share increasing by double digits.

Players in the space have already been mirroring their liquor and CPG counterparts in their marketing. For 2023, they’ve broken into new territory with collaborations inside and outside the category on an unprecedented scale.

Brands like Athletic Brewing, WhistlePig, Ritual Zero Proof, Seedlip and Wilderton have aligned with fitness tech, grocery-store staples, artisanal products and hospitality mavens. The companies formed programs targeting consumers skipping (or cutting down on) booze this month and beyond.

“In getting together, we can think through how to maximize the momentum of Dry January,” Scout Brisson, CEO of De Soi, told Adweek. “We’re brainstorming about how to convert consumers while there’s a ton of latent interest.”

Big ambitions, rising tides

De Soi, which debuted in 2022, plans to continue expanding its ecommerce channels and physical retail partnerships while making further inroads into the restaurant and nightclub scene. Its marketing, often with Perry as a prominent hook, will ramp up with more original content for digital and social platforms and a significant TikTok focus in the months ahead, Brisson said.

Boisson, the nonalcoholic bottle shop with locations in New York and California and a recently inked deal with Drizly for national distribution for 125 brands, was instrumental in De Soi’s launch. So for the drink’s first collaboration, and its largest promotional effort to date, it made sense to return to the brick-and-mortar pioneer, per Brisson. Perry even made a few in-person appearances, snapping selfies with fans.

“We both have equally big ambitions,” Brisson said of the Boisson partnership. “And their physical storefronts are such amazing educational touch points for consumers. It’s that idea of rising tides.”

Wet, dry or damp

It may seem anathema for a rye whiskey brand to take part in Dry January, but the Vermont-based WhistlePig is a veteran of the movement, and for 2023 has crafted both “wet” and “dry” versions of its classic Old Fashioned cocktails in ready-to-drink form.

The brand has linked with Sunkist Growers for the two products, with 100% of proceeds going to bartenders across America to help with the January drought. The cheeky promo is called “Orange You Glad It’s Dry January,” which will also dole out free oranges to consumers who sign up for a related giveaway.

Understanding that consumers may want to “go dry or damp,” WhistlePig worked with Sunkist “to add levity to a sober occasion with a bold statement on vitamin C and to support our bartending family” via the nonprofit group Turning Tables, Eliza McClure, vice president of marketing, told Adweek. 

The collaboration “is fun, festive and a unique way to showcase our multi-generational growers and the unlimited way to use Sunkist oranges from grove to garnish,” Christina Ward, senior director at Sunkist, said. 

Tasty and tech-forward

Among the other pacts this month are Ritual booze-free spirits and Acid League, a maker of teas, tonics, bitters, syrups and other mixers, and Wilderton’s Bittersweet Aperitivo with Smith Teamaker for a hot toddy kit called Rosy Cheeks.

Athletic Brewing, a leading seller of nonalcoholic craft beer, went the tech route via an alliance with wearable health coach brand Whoop. The promo, called “Give Dry a Try,” intends to explore the effects of alcohol on sleep, recovery and fitness through participants’ self-reported information.

While a growing number of consumers are temporary or permanent teetotalers, “80% of our customers still drink alcohol, and 31 days of abstinence can be a daunting challenge,” Bill Shuflet, Athletic Brewing co-founder and CEO, said. At month’s end, Whoop will examine thousands of data points to better understand how alcohol consumption impacts various sleep and recovery metrics.

Consumers who take part in “Give Dry a Try” can win a year’s subscription to the Athletic Brewing club, a direct-to-consumer platform, along with a 12-month Whoop membership.

Seedlip—a granddaddy of the space, now under the Diageo banner—chose a hospitality-centric promo for its Dry January activation. A collaboration with celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss, designed to “take the drab out of January,” will help a contest winner host a “tasteful and inclusive” alcohol-free bash, per the brand.

“This idea stemmed from the fact that January has a bad rap, so we set out to give people a positive experience,” Nicholas Rowland, senior marketing manager, told Adweek. “Ultimately, the Seedlip Soiree campaign was a great way to reposition what can be considered a socially isolating time as a moment of joyful celebration with friends and family, thanks to the power of genuine collaboration.”