When Kathleen Braine joined 818 Tequila as vice president of marketing almost four years ago, she was attracted to the founder-led vision.
Kendall Jenner’s company 818 Tequila is all about building emotional connections and showing up in the culture in creative ways.
“My very first call with Kendall, [she gave me] a very keen understanding of what she wanted this brand to be. She wanted it to be about magical moments, spent with friends and family, drinking Tequila and making memories,” says Braine.
818 Tequila launched in 2021. The brand has expanded quickly thanks to its connection to Gen Z on both social media and through in-person activations including a presence at events like Coachella.
“Kendall is way more than just our founder,” explains Braine. “She’s our creative visionary. She leads everything we do. My role as a CMO is to take her vision and leadership and bring that to life.”
Prior to joining Calabasas Beverage Company, Braine held senior roles at AB InBev, MetLife and Samsung Electronics. Brand Innovators caught up with Braine from her at-home office in New York to discuss the versatility of Tequila, the saturation point for brand collabs & how her job fulfills her childhood dream to be a pop culture-ologist. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Can you talk about how having a celebrity founder helps when you’re trying to tell the brand story and to put it out into culture?
It’s funny. Sometimes people have a chip on their shoulder about celebrity founders, which I think is very strange especially for brands in the alcohol, fashion and beauty space. Since the fifties and sixties, in the Madmen days, celebrities have been paid to promote different brands.
A celebrity founder is more authentic than that. It’s a real founder relationship with a team, which is very helpful. Kendall has a very keen vision of what she wants this brand to be and what the lifestyle is that she wants it to represent. It has been really helpful to have that as a North Star.
Can you talk about some of the stories that you’re telling out in the marketplace and how the brand is showing up?
We have three brand pillars, and one is about magical moments, which is very much our emotional brand pillar. We do a lot with moments between friends and family and how Tequila fits into that. One of our other brand pillars is the craft and the liquid, and with this we often emphasize the versatility of Tequila. Tequila isn’t just for shots and margaritas – although it’s great in both of those capacities – it’s also for things like Espresso Martinis, Old Fashioneds and even Negronis taste delicious with 818 Tequila.
It sounds like your storytelling approach is to instruct people on the different ways you can drink tequila. Do you share recipe ideas as well?
Shake Up the Classics is a concept we introduced in 2023 for National Tequila Day and we continue to evolve. It focuses on the fact that Tequila can be used in all the different cocktails. [In 2023] we had Kendall and her mom, Kris Jenner, make old classic cocktails like a Tom Collins with 818 Tequila – really focusing on this idea that Tequila tastes great in everything, because it is such a beautiful liquid that has such a depth of craft to it.
This year, we also did a celebration for our 818 brand holiday on 8/18 where we featured classic cocktails at classic cocktail lounges across the globe. All the classic cocktails were reimagined with 818 Tequila – Negronis, Aperol Spritz’s, Espresso Martinis etc.
Those Gen Z of age are known to drink less than previous generations. Can you talk about how you’re trying to reach them?
I think that one of the reasons that we are one of the fastest growing spirits in the country right now is that we are speaking to Gen Z of legal drinking age in a way that is in alignment with their ethos around drinking. It is about mixology, appreciating the spirit, appreciating the moments that you’re spending with your friends and your family. Alcohol can be as a part of that social occasion versus just about partying.
We emphasize deliberate consumption and the versatility and beauty of our liquid and everything we do. That’s very aligned with that new mentality around drinking.
Can you talk about how your past experiences have helped prepare you for this particular role?
I believe in your consumer first and thinking about who you’re trying to reach and then looking at messaging and strategy based on that. Though I’ve worked across a variety of sectors, I believe in marketing as a discipline, so I think that all of my past roles have prepared me really well for this current job. Additionally, I’ve always found what’s going on in culture to be really interesting from an academic, as well as a personal consumption standpoint. I remember asking my mom when I was a kid, can I be a pop culture-ologist? It’s equipped me to work in this space where lifestyle and branding and culture is so much a part of the work.
Because of my job, I’m now always the person that knows about trending things first in my late 30s friend group. My Gen Z coworkers always are like, “that’s two weeks old,” and I say “yes, but I’m the first 36-year-old to know about it” [laughs].
What is your take on the upswing of brand collabs these days?
This year Sabrina Carpenter and Van Leeuwen did the Espresso collab. That was a perfect collaboration because even though it was simple, it was very timely. It was the song of the summer! At 818, we’ve done some very well received collabs, our Chamberlain Coffee collaboration for instance. I think you’re going to see some people continue do collabs well, but then some ideas fly too close to the sun.
All of a sudden you have Velveeta hair dye [laughs]. It has begun to reach this saturation point where it was like, OK, not everything should be a collab. It’s no longer an earned idea just to turn your random household product into something else. Clorox ice cream shouldn’t be a thing.
There’s certain things that are out there in a way that makes sense. There’s certain things that are out there that’s just to get clicks. There has to be an insight, a reason to speak to the consumer. The reason our Chamberlain Coffee collab did so well is because it was led by a very clear insight. The Espresso Martini was the biggest cocktail of the moment. We make Tequila. They make espresso. Together we are perfect.