As you might expect, Mommy’s Time Out features a chair facing the corner, with a wineglass and a bottle on a table nearby. The MommyJuice label features a supple woman juggling a computer, a teddy bear, a saucepan, and a house. “Moms everywhere deserve a break,” coos the back label. “So tuck your kids into bed and have a glass of MommyJuice—because you deserve it.”
I called Cheryl Murphy Durzy, so-called Mom in Charge and founder of the label, at her home in San Martin, California. Why MommyJuice? “My kids call my wine ‘Mommy’s juice.’ Lots of kids I know do this. Moms love talking about why they need MommyJuice, things like their kids wetting the bed. ‘Can’t wait for MommyJuice!’”
What are her thoughts about playdates with wine, about the fact that risky drinking is on the rise for women? Says Murphy Durzy: “For years, men have been relaxing at the end of the day. Does anyone ever say anything about a dad who has a beer at the ball game? No. I think it’s sexist.”
In Canada, the makers of Girls’ Night Out wines—featuring what they call “aspirational” cocktail dresses on their labels—went to the trouble of registering their hot title in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Doug Beatty, vice president of marketing for Colio Estate Wines and originator of the Girls’ Night Out name, says: “Eighty-five percent of the purchase decisions in the twelve- to fifteen-dollar range are ‘female-driven.’” For that reason, he was “just shocked” when he learned that the name “Girls’ Night Out” was up for grabs. Having expanded into wine-flavored beverages—Strawberry Samba and Tropical Tango being two—he says the future of his successful label looks “terrifyingly fun.” Says Beatty, “Those of the female gender are those who have done all the hard work.”
And what about Skinnygirl Cocktail line products, reported to be the fastest-growing spirit brand of 2012? Founded in 2009 by reality star Bethenny Frankel (Real Housewives of New York), the Skinnygirl line was the fastest-growing spirits line in the United States two years ago. Last year, Skinnygirl Cocktails—“the brand that has re-energized the way women cocktail and define themselves”—launched an advertising campaign called “Drink Like a Lady,” including its first-ever national television commercial: “The lady knows how to cocktail! Skinnygirl now has all the wine, vodka, and ready-to-serve cocktails you need—without the calories you don’t! Drink like a lady!” The campaign coincided with the brand’s expanded product offerings, including Skinnygirl Vodka with Natural Flavors (White Cranberry Cosmo being an example) and Skinnygirl The Wine Collection.
Imbibing, without the extra calories: this is key. Last year, even the musician Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas got into the act, launching Voli, a new low-calorie vodka. It comes in six flavors, including “Original Lyte,” raspberry cocoa, and pear vanilla. She was reported to have said, “I think a lot of people with healthy lifestyles like me, who love to work out, work hard, socialize, and have a drink at the end of the day, have been craving something like this,” adding: “There are no extra sugars.” In other words, girlie spirits, with up to 40 percent fewer calories than leading brands. Meanwhile, beer companies have started pushing their product as diet-friendly: lime-infused beverages, low-carb alternatives, lower-calorie options.
What’s surprising about all this? We are used to a drinking culture pitched at men—a great example being German liquor company G-Spirits, which promises that every single drop of its alcoholic beverages has been poured on the naked breasts of a female model. Its whiskey, for instance, has dampened the breasts of Alexa Varga, Hungary’s 2012 Playboy Playmate of the Year. All bottles come with nude photos of the model involved in the process. This example is bizarre, yet somehow predictable. So too is an ad for Belvedere Vodka, in which a beautiful model uses the reflection from a guy’s shiny belt buckle as a mirror in which to apply her lipstick: her mouth is close to his crotch.
But Skinnygirl Vodka? MommyJuice? When did the female drinker become the focus of the spirits market?
I flew to Baltimore to find out. I knew that David Jernigan, the savvy, boyish-looking director of CAMY, would be willing to ballpark a date. Based in his spacious office at Johns Hopkins University, Jernigan has spent his career watching the industry. When, I want to know, did the world begin to change?
Apparently, in the late 1960s: Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, bought Miller Beer, and brought the techniques of market segmentation and lifestyle advertising to the marketing of Miller. They took a relatively regional beer and turned it into the number two brand in the United States—and they did this by using the tobacco marketing playbook. “In response,” says Jernigan, “August Busch III, who was head of Anheuser-Busch, took the thick book of sporting events in the U.S. and threw it at his marketing people, saying, ‘Buy this!’ And they did, everything from tiddlywinks to baseball.” At one point, they were sponsoring twenty-three out of twenty-four major-league baseball teams. It was a sea change: they bought into all the lifestyle marketing that had been pioneered by tobacco. Says Jernigan, “The wine and spirits folks were left in the dust.”
Beer ruled North America in the 1980s and early ’90s. Beer was fun, beer was sport. The spirits industry was seen as stodgy and boring. Suddenly, says Jernigan, it decided to play catch-up: it did market segmentation, looked at who was underperforming, and of course, it saw women. “For the spirits industry, this was a global opportunity. This was conscious: they understood they had to shoot younger and they had to shoot harder.”
Thus was born the alcopop. Also known as the cooler, “chick beer,” or “starter drinks”—sweet, brightly colored vodka- or rum-flavored concoctions in ready-to-drink format. Jernigan calls them “the anti-beer,” “drinks of initiation”—and my favorite: “cocktails with training wheels.” “They’re the transitional drinks,” he says, “particularly for young women, pulling them away from beer and towards distilled spirits. Getting brand loyalty to the spirits brand names in adolescence, so that you get that annuity for a lifetime. An obvious product for reaching this wonderful and not yet sufficiently tapped market of young women.”
According to 2010 data, 68 percent of eighth-grade drinkers reported having had an alcopop in the past month, 67 percent of tenth-grade drinkers, and 58 percent of twelfth-grade drinkers. But in the 19–28 category, fewer than half had had an alcopop in the past month. Broken down by gender, the data showed alcopops were more popular with girls and women in every age group. The height of the craze for alcopops was 2004. By then they had done what the industry needed them to do—reach out to females, and establish a bridge to the parent brands like Smirnoff vodka and Bacardi rum. And of course, none of the marketing shows the consequences of drinking.
Let’s take a second and look at the Smirnoff brand. In 1997, two major alcohol firms merged to form Diageo, the largest distilled spirits producer in the world—both then and now. This British-based multinational developed a sophisticated strategy to reenergize Smirnoff vodka: in 1999 it launched Smirnoff Ice, which became the number one beverage in the alcopop category. With a hefty marketing push, Smirnoff vodka sales grew 61 percent between 2000 and 2008—a sharp contrast to the 1990s, when this brand saw a dip in sales.
“Smirnoff is the girls’ vodka,” says Kate Simmie. At twenty-nine, she has long matured out of her Smirnoff phase: her new love is Blueberi Stolichnaya. But the McGill grad, now a Toronto marketing professional, has a firm handle on her own limits. “I’m five foot two,” she says with a grin. While she has many friends who do shots, she thinks twice before joining them, or having a martini. “I can’t imagine dating without drinking, but I tend to stick to wine,” she says. “I can’t handle shots.”
Shots make a difference. Compared with distilled spirits, it takes a lot more beer or wine to produce alcohol poisoning or impairment, to compromise judgment around risky sex, which is why distilled spirits, in most cultures, are treated differently. And there’s an additional health issue for women. Not only are young women experimenting with the strongest beverage, but they’re more vulnerable because of the way alcohol metabolizes in female bodies. “If you’re female and you’re drinking spirits, and the guy’s drinking beer, you’re at a complete disadvantage,” says Jernigan. “He’s drinking a weaker beverage, he’s metabolizing it more efficiently,