What have I done to deserve this flat, flavorless Manhattan!?1
– Unnamed Mobster, The Simpsons
[Author’s Note: This article is Part I of a two-part series of marketing scams in food and drinks. This was initially written as part of the Chapter in Herd Immunity: Societal Deprogramming about understanding the basics of Marketing, Psychology, and Influence.]
Don’t be a poseur. Life is too short to pretend you like someone or something you don’t like. As I write this, I’m reminded that even the food and drinks we consume aren’t immune from marketing gimmicks. Alcohol is an excellent example of how people are tricked into believing gimmicks over quality. There’s an episode of the television show Community where Troy (played by Donald Glover) turns 21, and the study group spends the entire episode telling Troy what drink he should drink for his first legal drink. At the end of the episode, he ignores all their advice and has a “7 and 7” as a tribute to a friend.2 I’m also reminded of an episode of How I Met Your Mother where Barney and Marshall fight, and Lily and Robin spend the entire episode figuring out the perfect cocktail to get friends back together.3 In both cases, the answer is simple: Life is short; drink what you like.
If you had told me ten years ago that I’d drink malbecs and French rosés, I would’ve punched you in the nose. If you told me I would urge friends and coworkers to search for Provence wines at their local store, I would laugh because I couldn’t point to Provence on a map. I like Caymus Cabernet, but I have zero desire to spend $70 on a bottle of wine. I have bottles of wine that cost $10 that I enjoy more. Most people overcomplicate wines due to their price points, which gives idiots the opportunity to masquerade as wine snobs. Many people equate an expensive bottle of wine as better tasting or quality. People needlessly overcomplicate the wine selection process. When I worked as a wine salesman, people stopped me many times every day because they were paralyzed by choice. The answer is simple, drink what you like. This means trying a bunch of different things.
The older I get, the more my palette changes. I’ve learned to appreciate strong tastes: cold brew coffee, bourbon and vodka straight, and tannic wines. If I’m gonna drink and have a hangover, I want to enjoy the taste. I remember one time I was in Vegas playing games with friends and drinking vodka straight, taking straight shots with no chaser. One of the girlfriends in the group shamed one of her guys because he needed a chaser, and I didn’t. Of course, by that time, I was already too drunk for it to matter, but the message remains the same: I drink what I like, not just because of a slick marketing campaign.
[Author’s Note: This could be a false memory. I drank a lot of vodka that week.]
Thanks for reading Herd Immunity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
When I was a bartender, drunk girls always asked me to make silly drinks for them. What is it about being a young girl and clueless about ordering alcohol? As a bartender, you’re trained to ask people what they like regarding specific alcohols (vodka, gin, tequila) or flavor profiles (sweet, fruity, spicy). No matter what they describe, I’d tell them, “I know the perfect drink for you.” I know what basic white girls like, so I just made them the same drink every time: Vodka, Chambord, Blue curacao, with orange and pineapple juices, and a grenadine float. When you mix them in a tall glass and layer them correctly, it looks like a rainbow pop. Inevitably they’d like it and ask me what it was called “Fall in love with J,” I would tell them as I charged them $10, teased them for liking girly drinks, and got a ton of phone numbers as a result. Why? People are easily manipulated by marketing. Drunk club girls are no exception. But it was still fun, nonetheless.
Over the past few years, I have developed one exception to my “Drink What You Like” rule: Seltzer drinks. Seltzer drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) are not real drinks. It’s water with carbon dioxide. People that believe they enjoy seltzer drinks are falling for the scam. They’re falling for fancy marketing and persuasion gimmicks. Seltzer drinks are bullshit, just like every fad in the alcohol industry. Imagine being tricked by bubbles.
My work history in the alcohol industry is long and varied as a server, bartender, and liquor and wine sales rep. Because of this, I’ve had a front-row seat to all the various gimmicks over the past two decades. Everyone follows suit when one company introduces a successful product; seltzers are no different. Although the first big names in the market were White Claw and Truly, a few years later, everyone and their mother was marketing a hard seltzer. Some of the various “copycat” gimmicks in the industry I’ve witnessed firsthand:
- I remember when hard sodas, such as “Not Your Father’s Root Beer,” were all the rage.
- I remember when India Pale Ales were oversaturating the market. First, every brewery in the country had to make an IPA, then a Double IPA, and now a session IPA.
- I remember when every basic chick was pounding baby prosecco and Moscato with maraschino cherries at the club.
- I remember when everyone had to have canned cocktails and mini cans of wine to take on the boat or the beach.
It was all clever marketing, and most people fell for it.
Go back in time ten years ago: You could walk into your favorite supermarket or liquor store on January 1st and look at all the seltzer bottles on the shelf. Walk into that same supermarket or liquor store on December 31st of that same year, and not a single bottle would be out of place. No one used seltzer as a mixer since they were filming the original Twilight Zone serials in the early ‘60s. One day, all of the big liquor distributors realized that the planet was sitting on 300 trillion gallons of seltzer water, and the brightest copywriters, ad gurus, and Apple Genius employees met in a top-secret lair deep within the Marianas Trench and devised a plan so sinister it made me question the very fiber of reality. They could’ve shipped all the seltzer water to Africa and solved the water crisis. However, that’d be too easy. Their plan: make people believe seltzer water is palatable. We’ll do this by putting an eyedropper’s worth of vodka and drops of Mio flavor water in them… and idiots worldwide went ballistic for it!
First, what does it say about you that you like something with zero flavor? They put pomegranate on the label, and your brain thinks, “Wow, this is what seltzer mixed with Pom juice tastes like. I like it! I can taste the pomegranate.” No, you don’t. It’s like the same people who think the different Fruit Loops colors taste differently!4
I once posted on Facebook something like, “People who like LaCroix are the same people who enjoy missionary sex and think mayonnaise is too spicy.” Get some excitement in your life. Of course, men will justify these drinks by saying, “I can drink 20 of them on the golf course! They’re only five calories each!” You shouldn’t be drinking 20 of anything! Twenty, 8-ounce glasses of water is 160 fluid ounces. That’s over a gallon of water—good luck pissing every 5 minutes. I drink a gallon of water daily and am constantly in the bathroom. Why are you drinking that much seltzer? As I edit Herd Immunity, I found a chart from the Sleds and Spreads Instagram account, ranking Hard Seltzers as if they were securities with credit ratings. In their rankings, only 4 of the seltzers are junk grade. Ten of the seltzers have investment grades, with 7 of the ten being “A” or higher grades. I think these people should all have their heads examined! Seltzer water belongs with pumpkin beer–in the trash! I can abide wine cocktails and White Russians, but The Dude cannot abide seltzer drinks. Drink what you like, but stop lying and pretending you like seltzer water. It’s just marketing.
Another annoying instance of marketing is rich dudes and Instagram influencers all guzzling Pellegrino like they’re the CEO of Nestle. Is it better water? No, not really. You’ve been finessed by bubbles. If we’re out at dinner and people want to buy sparkling water, I’ll drink it. But drinking still water doesn’t make me feel like a serf. Conversely, drinking water with bubbles doesn’t make me feel like a king.
Life is short. Drink what you like. If you like Franzia box wine, drink it up. There’s a reason why Bud Light is the number one selling beer in America: somebody somewhere is drinking it. However, if you like seltzer, you’re either lying, a victim of marketing, or both.
*In an interesting bibliographic twist, while researching this article, I discovered these episodes aired exactly six months apart to the day on competing networks.
Support Herd Immunity:
Get Herd Immunity: Mental Firmware
Get Herd Immunity: Societal Deprogramming
1 The Simpsons. 1991. Episode 8F03. “Bart the Murderer.” Directed by Rich Moore. Written by John Swartzwelder. Aired October 10, 1991, on Fox. 20th Century Fox. DVD, disc 1.
2 Community. 2010. Episode 209. “Mixology Certification.” Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. Written by Andy Bobrow. Aired December 2, 2010, on NBC. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00428RYW8/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s2
3 How I Met Your Mother. 2011. Episode 6ALH21. “The Perfect Cocktail.” Directed by Pamela Fryman. Written by Joe Kelly. Aired May 2, 2011, on CBS. https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished/dp/B0043YMJDA/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=how+i+met+your+mothe r&qid=1626990999&s=instant-video&sr=1-5
4 Locker, Melissa. 2014. “Breaking Breakfast News: Froot Loops Are All the Same Flavor.” Time. January 21, 2014. Accessed November 28, 2022. https://time.com/1477/breaking-breakfast-news-froot-loops-are-all-the-same-flavor/