How Craft Tequila Brands Can Compete with Celebrity Notoriety (RESEARCH)

Production method differentiation offers craft tequila brands a genuine pathway to market expansion.

But that differentiation means nothing if consumers remain unaware of it.

Brands must invest substantially in education across the entire supply chain: their own sales teams, distributor partners, retailers, and bar and restaurant personnel. Without informed advocates at every touchpoint, even superior production choices remain invisible to end consumers.

Success requires discipline. Brands need to identify a single, concise, memorable differentiator and communicate it relentlessly. Whether tahona crushing, stone oven aging, proprietary water sourcing, or wild yeast fermentation, the message must be consistent, clear, and repeated until it becomes synonymous with the brand itself.

This educational burden reveals a structural advantage enjoyed by celebrity-backed tequila brands. Many have achieved notable commercial success precisely because they sidestep the education challenge entirely.

Celebrity tequila brands possess an inherent narrative advantage: instant brand recognition tied to a recognizable personality. Consumers need not understand fermentation methodology or agave sourcing. The narrative is simple and memorable: "This tequila is owned by someone whose movie you once enjoyed."

That mnemonic and preference shortcut is extraordinarily powerful. It requires no technical knowledge. It transcends production complexity. Craft brands simply cannot compete with that level of built-in brand equity without doubling-down on their own commitment to educate about the stark differences that exist in the category.

Most smaller tequila brands have, at some level, outsourced consumer education responsibility to external parties. They rely on agave spirits content creators across social media, podcasts, and digital publications like The Tequila Report to drive awareness⁶. Secondarily, brands assume that retailer and bar staff will self-educate and organically transfer that knowledge to customers.

This strategy is failing.

Our research reveals that only 29 percent of consumers are ever influenced by tequila recommendations from retail employees. This figure itself obscures a more fundamental reality: 56 percent of tequila shoppers arrive knowing exactly what they want to purchase. Nothing - no employee recommendation, no in-store signage, no persuasive messaging - changes their minds.

This indicates that education and brand preference formation occur upstream in the consumer journey, through social media, brand websites, word-of-mouth among enthusiasts, and similar channels. Retail staff recommendations arrive too late in the decision process to matter, if they occur at all.

The on-premise channel mirrors this dynamic precisely. Fewer than one in four bar patrons are ever swayed by bartender or waitstaff recommendations. More starkly, 79 percent of consumers enter bars and restaurants already knowing which tequila they intend to order. They show minimal willingness to deviate.

Despite substantial distributor and brand owner investment in promoting specific tequilas through popular cocktails, point-of-sale influence remains negligible. Consumer preferences have already crystallized before they reach the bar.

This pattern carries a critical implication for craft tequila brands. The battle for preference happens early, through digital channels and peer influence networks that brands themselves often neglect to control or properly resource.

For brands that cannot rely on large scale advertising to create demand, emerging evidence suggests they should deploy owned channels - social media platforms, websites, email programs - to teach consumers and bartenders/retailers directly about their production methods, sourcing decisions, and competitive advantages.

A compelling case study demonstrates the potential. The PKGD Group imports and markets multiple agave spirits brands, including the rapidly expanding tequila G4. In 2025, PKGD recognized the education gap and responded decisively. They launched a YouTube channel, digital magazine, email newsletter, and a series of comprehensive interactive online courses designed to educate both consumers and industry professionals about their brands and production methodologies.

The results have been remarkable. G4 alone achieved 400 percent growth over two years. The PKGD media initiative generated tens of millions of impressions, building awareness and preference more effectively than traditional trade education or retail recommendations ever could.

And their mobile-friendly interactive courses inside PKGD University have been rapidly embraced by distributor sales teams, retailers and bartenders, perhaps indicating that the reason consumers don’t take much advice at point-of-sale is because the people giving the advice don’t yet have enough knowledge, in the right format. 

Overall, this model offers a blueprint for other craft brands. By controlling their own educational narrative through owned digital channels, brands can reach consumers at the precise moment they are forming preferences. They can explain their differentiators in depth. They can build community and loyalty among engaged enthusiasts.

Entremanos also exemplifies the build-your-own-content approach. Rather than partnering with third-party creators, they developed internal expertise. Chief Operating Officer Alan Taylor transformed his tequila knowledge and passion into a thriving social media presence, accumulating more than 125,000 combined followers across Instagram and TikTok.

Cazcanes pursued an alternative strategy: the buy approach. They hired popular social media content creator Wayne Cafariella as their global brand ambassador, leveraging his existing audience and credibility rather than building from scratch.

These paths require substantial investment. Content creation, platform development, and consistent messaging demand resources that strain most smaller brands' budgets. Yet the alternative - relying on retail staff or external media outlets to represent your brand story adequately - has proven unreliable.

As the saying goes, hope is not a strategy.

Brands that control their narrative through owned channels, whether built internally or acquired through strategic partnerships, position themselves for sustainable growth. Those that depend on passive representation through third-party channels risk invisibility in a crowded marketplace.

Summary: Online or in-person, brands serious about capturing market share in 2026 and beyond must become both media companies and spirit producers. 

⁶The Tequila Report partners with many tequila brands. Most of these would be considered “craft” tequilas. A complete list of the brands we work with is at TequilaReport.com/partners and includes Cazcanes, and PKGD Group.