Athletic Brewing’s CMO on Famous Faces, Free Brews and Fierce Competition

Head into a nightclub, belly up to the bar and order an Athletic—making note of this fast-growing brand’s non-alcoholic status is entirely optional.

For a recent promotion, Athletic Brewing bought the first round for parched Americans, stepping up its efforts in the on-premise space shortly after overtaking behemoths Heineken and Budweiser as the top-selling booze-free beer in the country’s supermarkets, with 19% market share, per NielsenIQ.

While executives are still tallying results from last week’s freebie, dubbed “It’s Athletic, Ask for It,” early signs point to a hit: Visits to the store finder section of the website, which includes bar and restaurant locations, leaped 750% over the daily average, and ecommerce sales increased 68%, per the brand.

The program comes as Athletic logged the best month in its six-year history, with record sales in April, and sets up “the broadest reaching campaigns we’ve ever done” that will stretch from TV, digital and social to experiential, retail and influencer activations, according to Andrew Katz, Athletic’s chief marketing officer.

As a core tactic, Athletic plans to boost its sampling efforts by 25% this year—the brand will dole out gratis sips across a mix of new and ongoing alliances including local road races, the Spotify House at the upcoming CMA Fest in Nashville, Tenn., and via a Houston Dynamo FC sponsorship.

“Marketing spend is significantly higher this year—in the multimillion dollars,” Katz told ADWEEK. “Traditional beer consumption is highest in May, June, July and August, so we’re riding that wave.”

Meanwhile, an ongoing and deepening relationship with country music star Walker Hayes will put Athletic in front of the artist’s multigenerational fan base during his Same Drunk national tour. 

The famously teetotaling Hayes has become Athletic’s “Chief Fancy Officer,” with the two partnering on a limited-time brew called Fancy Like. The product is named after his chart-topping 2021 single that went viral, setting off a TikTok craze and juicing business at name-dropped Applebee’s. Fancy Like, the beer, had a cameo in a recent Hayes music video and will be sold at his concerts while supplies last.

Athletic’s marketing onslaught happens as non-alcoholic beer sales at bars and clubs have jumped nearly 33% in 2024 and increased 35.5% in groceries, according to NielsenIQ. At the same time, traditional beer sales dipped to their lowest levels in a generation—beer shipments fell below 200 million barrels for the first time since 1999, per Beer Marketer’s Insights—as drinkers turned to canned cocktails and seltzers, tequilas and other spirits.

The zero-proof category is still niche and nascent, with New England Consulting Group managing partner Gary Stibel recommending a break with the pack.

“Athletic occupies an infinitesimally small share of bladder, yet the brand is capable of being much larger,” Stibel said. “The next step? Get rid the NA piece of the marketing and become a major beverage player.”

Yet booze-free booze and “sober curious” are trending topics. As the modern temperance movement rages on—45% of Generation Z has never had alcohol, while 41% of imbibers say they are trying to drink less, per Nielsen—Katz spoke to ADWEEK about cozying up to boldface names, choosing the right media channels and competing in a jam-packed category.

ADWEEK: There’s been a surge in booze-free products over the past few years, so is the category too crowded now?

Andrew Katz: There are over 100 entrants into the NA beer space, so from a consumer perspective, there are just so many things to try, some good, some not so good. And the big brands like Corona, Heineken and Budweiser all have their NA component. I liken this to what I observed in the energy drink, coconut water and kombucha categories. This is not a new phenomenon: People see something with a lot of heat around it and they want to participate.

The challenge for most brands is that they don’t really have a brand—they’re dabblers. They can’t raise capital, they can’t get distribution. Ultimately what happens is a shakeout. The winners will continue to win, and the fly-by-night competitors will be gone. Athletic has a tremendous head start—of the top 15 brands, we’re the only one in the category that only produces non-alcoholic beer. 

Speaking of the major beverage conglomerates, how are you assessing their NA presence?

NA is south of 8% [of sales] for any of those companies—92% of what they’re selling is alcohol, so I think they’re between a rock and a hard place. They don’t want to sell against themselves because that’s where the bulk of their revenue is coming from. They have to pay attention to their total portfolio. We’re really fortunate in that we focus on our 100% NA portfolio, which gives us degrees of freedom that some other bigger brands don’t have.

Walker Hayes has really internalized your brand—what does it mean to have him as a vocal ambassador?

We’ve been able to do some fun things that consumers are appreciating, and we’ve both been able to garner earned media at a time when it’s incredibly hard to break through. When he did Today recently, we saw an instant spike in our site traffic [250% within minutes]. And our fancy levels are through the roof at the moment.

Do your demographics overlap, or does Hayes put you in front of different consumer groups? 

He has a lot of young families as fans, and that’s the audience we’ve been speaking to since day one. But as far as geography goes, where he tours and where he’s popular, that hits on some markets where we’re growing quickly but where there’s still a tremendous amount of [heartland] white space. The last thing we want is to be seen as a coastal brand. We need to make sure we have mass appeal, since we’re sold in all 50 states and at retailers like Target, Walmart, Trader Joe’s.

Talk about a few of your other partnerships and how you decide when there’s a fit for the brand.

We’re working with a range of people from sports to music to food, like chef David Chang and his Netflix show, Dinner Time Live, and Peloton instructor Kendall Toole. Over time, we’ve been able to reach out to bigger names, and we get a lot of inbound interest, too. A relationship begins with an alignment of values and a common understanding, and then we get into numbers like their reach, engagement and cultural relevance. In many cases, they’re not teetotalers, but Athletic is part of their lifestyle. They help us overcome this big barrier where people ask, “Why would I want an NA beer?” There’s still a lot of educating to do, but like with Walker, these partnerships help take away the stigma of drinking NA beer.

In such a fragmented media environment, what’s working for you?

There’s no surprise that live sports continue to be one of the very few things that people tune into in real time, so we’ll be front and center in a lot of the National Basketball Association playoffs, National Hockey League and PGA Tour, in-venue and on-broadcast. A little bit of linear TV, not much, mostly OTT (over the top) and streaming to meet consumers, especially younger ones, where they are. A lot of social media like YouTube, where we’re producing our own content like Take Two that goes on hikes with interesting people, putting more value-added content into the world that’s not pure advertising.