Why the Always Sunny Team Took a Shot at a Whiskey Brand

When It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia stars Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney launched whiskey brand Four Walls, it was supposed to be a beer.

“We felt we were uniquely positioned to actually authentically bring a celebrity brand of something to the market,” Howerton said at Adweek X in Los Angeles this week. “We’d seen a lot of tequilas, vodkas, high-end celebrity brands out there, and we got excited about the idea initially of possibly doing a beer.”

The trio settled on whiskey after fellow co-founder Casey McGrath pointed out that one of the largest costs associated with a liquid is shipping.

But according to Howerton, McGrath liked the idea of a beer, which is why Four Walls “brought a beer aesthetic to a whiskey brand.”

“I love beer advertising,” McGrath said. “Everything about the way that we’ll build [Four Walls] will be a beer, except for the liquid,” noting that the company’s spots are a nod to classic beer advertising over the years.

“Four Walls is very much from an advertising standpoint, a beer brand. It’s about celebrating the good times in the way that the best beer brands have,” McGrath added.

When launching the company, McElhenney and Howerton took their cues from McElhenney’s business partner Ryan Reynolds, who bought Aviation Gin in 2018 before selling it to Diageo for $610 million.

“[Reynolds] encouraged us to lean all the way in and making fun of ourselves, but never the product,” McElhenney said. “We have a brand of comedy that works very nicely with that. Let’s make sure that we create a really great product that we all love that we would drink so that it feels authentic, and then we can have a lot of fun with how we interact with each other in the messaging.”

In launching Four Walls, the team wanted to avoid the pitfalls that could come with a celebrity-fronted brand, with McElhenney pointing out that celebrity spirit brands could become “low-hanging fruit” and that the beverage industry is tough to break into.

Leveraging the power of fandom

To differentiate Four Walls, McElhenney and Howerton used the power of other brands at their disposal, including Wrexham FC and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

“We’re doing things like name in lights at Radio City Music Hall, on the sleeve of Wrexham jerseys, media value in the 20s, 30s, 40 millions of dollars for zero dollars. You have to show up like a brand that’s been around for 10 years or 100 years and compete on their level without the money and the resources that those brands have,” McElhenney said.

The Four Walls branding appears on the sleeve of the training kit for Welsh club Wrexham FC, co-owned by McElhenney and Reynolds. The team exploded in popularity in the U.S. thanks to the FX documentary series Welcome to Wrexham, recently renewed for Season 3.

“Wrexham is such a great example of the power of storytelling, and where do you tell your best stories? At the bar,” said Kelsey Trainor, chief strategy officer of McElhenney’s company. “It was always part of the plan for Wrexham and Four Walls to merge together, but we saw an opportunity for it to happen a little bit sooner.”

Part of Four Walls’ rapid growth comes from the popularity of Always Sunny, with Howerton saying that viewers have bought the whiskey because they’re fans of the show, even if they aren’t whiskey drinkers.

“We look at this as a creative endeavor, in the same way that It’s Always Sunny is a creative endeavor,” Howerton said. “We’ve been building a business together for the last 20 years, and it just happened to be a TV show and not a whiskey.”

According to Howerton, the show takes its relationship with fans seriously, so delivering a quality brand was imperative.

“It’s another reason why it was very important to create a product that was good,” Howerton said. “We’ve built up a tremendous amount of goodwill with our fans through the years, and we don’t want to take advantage of that in a negative way.”

And while It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has not yet resumed production following the end of the Hollywood strikes, the show has been renewed for Season 17 and 18—making it the longest-running live action sitcom in U.S. TV history.