The brand’s 90-second spot intends to empower consumers by showing a variety of festive situations that are enhanced, not hobbled, by non-alcoholic beverages, a category traditionally saddled with a wet blanket image.
Free Spirits also takes a poke at the entrenched liquor industry—and its pervasive advertising—for planting the notion in the collective consciousness that booze is required party fuel.
“For too long, the world has been working to convince us that alcohol needs to be the star player of a great social life, the guest of honor at every gathering. Without it—and a lot of it—we’re missing out,” says the ad’s narrator. “Let’s refuse to follow any kind of industry or societal expectations.”
In that context, “rage later” and “drink yourself silly” take on a purposely different meaning.
The ‘soberest generation’
The language and approach may appeal particularly to millennials and Gen Z, who are largely responsible for driving the NA trend, with the latter often referred to as “the soberest generation.”
Brands in the segment like Athletic Brewing, Surely, Proxies, Ritual, Seedlip and Starla are quickly expanding their distribution into groceries and other mainstream retailers, under the same roof with NA products from liquor behemoths such as Diageo and Heineken.
Young NA brands also are finding themselves invited to a number of unexpected places these days—the New York Mets’ Citi Field, AEG’s Coachella music festival and JetBlue airlines among them—as the category gains momentum.
Still a nascent segment—making up less than 1% of total alcohol sales—booze-free beverages logged $510 million in sales during the 52-week period ending July 29, 2023, a 31% increase over the previous year, per Nielsen IQ.
Sales of low- and no-alcohol drinks topped $11 billion in 10 global markets in 2022, a 7% year-over-year growth, per IWSR. The non-alcoholic category accounted for the lion’s share—90%—of that figure, with the researcher predicting double-digit growth in the U.S., Australia and Canada by 2026.
