Find and hire a senior
Alcohol Marketing Consultant: Senior brand and growth operators for spirits, wine, and beer brands
Our senior alcohol marketing consultant brings operator-level judgment to your team. Spirits, wine, beer, and RTD brands engage Chameleon Collective for senior marketing leadership, brand work, and growth programs from operators who have worked on Bacardi, Diageo, Terlato Wines, and craft distilleries.
Talk to a brand operator
Our senior alcohol marketing consultant brings operator-level judgment to your team
Why teams hire our alcohol marketing consultant
Brand operators who have done the work
Tavis Salazar has led brand and creative direction for Bacardi and Gate 11 Distillery; his thirty-year track record spans branded campaigns, identity development, and the experience design that builds bottle-to-shelf-to-glass consistency. Megan LaCivita ran digital media strategy for Terlato Wines while at Omnicom.
Senior CPG and lifestyle brand thinking
Freddie Laker, founder of Chameleon, led award-winning agency campaigns for Diageo plus a CPG client list that included Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Mars. The collective bench brings senior CPG operators who understand how distinctive brand assets get built across alcohol and adjacent lifestyle categories.
Growth marketing for the changing alcohol landscape
RTD growth, hard-seltzer category shifts, craft-distillery DTC, wine-club retention, and the post-prohibition channel constraints that shape every digital strategy. Our growth operators have run search, social, and lifecycle programs across regulated categories with brand-safety guardrails built in.
Why alcohol brands hire Chameleon Collective
The alcohol category has been re-shaping for a decade. Spirits gained share from beer. Premiumization expanded the high-end. RTDs and hard seltzers blew up the adjacency math. Wine clubs went DTC. Craft distilleries grew faster than the major spirits houses on a percentage basis even as the majors absorbed most of the absolute growth. Through all of that, every marketing decision still has to navigate channel restrictions, age-gating, regulated copy review, and a brand-safety landscape unlike any other consumer category.
Chameleon Collective is a 275-person senior operator network with brand and growth specialists who have worked on alcohol and adjacent lifestyle categories. We staff engagements with operators who have done the work before, not generalists picking up the category on your dime.
Brand work for alcohol portfolios
Tavis Salazar's pre-Chameleon work included brand strategy and creative direction for Bacardi, Gate 11 Distillery, and a roster of lifestyle and retail clients (Bloomingdales, Crabtree and Evelyn, Bigelow Teas, Macy's, Mielle Organics, Naturopathica, Malin and Goetz). His approach combines positioning rigor with visual-identity execution, which is the right combination for alcohol brands where the bottle, the bar back, the off-premise shelf, and the digital storefront all need to read as one brand.
Media and growth across regulated channels
Megan LaCivita ran digital media strategy at Omnicom for Terlato Wines (the family-owned wine business behind Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio and other premium imports). She leads media planning and channel investment with a creator's eye for the partnership opportunities most agencies miss. Nick Surface has run growth marketing programs across paid media, SEO, content, and influencer for wine and spirits clients among a wider B2B and B2C portfolio.
Founder-level CPG perspective
Freddie Laker spent significant portions of his pre-Chameleon career on the CPG side, including agency-led work for Diageo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Mars. He founded Chameleon Collective in 2015 to build a senior-operator network that could deliver the brand and growth work CPG and lifestyle brands need without the agency-overhead model. His CPG bench is a starting point for any alcohol-brand conversation.
What our alcohol marketing engagements cover
Most engagements span one or more of the disciplines below. We staff the right combination from the collective and bring in additional operators as scope expands.
- Brand strategy, positioning, and identity. Repositioning legacy spirits brands, launching craft distillery brands, building house brands for emerging RTD lines, repackaging wine portfolios. The work covers naming, identity systems, brand voice, and the visual language that holds across packaging, bar back, off-premise shelf, and digital.
- Interim and fractional senior leadership. CMO, brand lead, head of digital, head of CRM, head of growth roles across spirits houses, wineries, breweries, RTD operators, and craft distilleries.
- Performance marketing and growth. Paid social, search, programmatic display, and connected-TV programs that respect age-gating, channel restrictions, and the regulatory landscape of regulated-substance advertising.
- DTC and eCommerce for wine and spirits. Wine-club retention, subscription growth, direct-to-consumer launches in DTC-eligible states, and the regulatory operational backbone that makes DTC alcohol commerce work.
- Trade marketing and on-premise programs. The work that connects the brand to bar managers, sommeliers, distributors, and on-premise programming.
- PR and earned media. Trade press, consumer-spirits and wine media, lifestyle press, and the long-form storytelling that builds reputation in a brand-safety-conscious category.
- Adjacent CPG and lifestyle leverage. Operators in the collective with deep CPG and lifestyle backgrounds (Diageo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Mars, lifestyle and beauty) bring the brand-asset thinking many alcohol brands borrow from adjacent CPG categories.
- Permanent senior-leader recruiting. Marketing, brand, digital, CX, and sales leaders placed at the VP, SVP, and C-suite levels across alcohol and adjacent CPG clients.
How We Compare
| Feature | Chameleon Collective | Alcohol-specialist agency | CPG generalist agency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs the engagement | Former CMO, brand lead, or head-of operator | Senior partner, junior delivery team | Account director, junior delivery team |
| Alcohol-category operator experience | Operators who have worked on Bacardi, Diageo, Terlato Wines, Gate 11 | Specialist credentials | Variable |
| Brand plus performance plus CRM | All three under one MSA | Brand-specialist, rarely performance | Generalist |
| Interim leadership | Two-to-four-week deployment, in the seat | Typically not offered |
Frequently asked questions
Common questions from alcohol-brand marketing leaders evaluating Chameleon Collective.
Our alcohol marketing consultant advises: Not yet on this site. The brand work for Bacardi, Gate 11 Distillery, and Terlato Wines was executed inside agency engagements before those operators joined Chameleon. Our DTC and digital-growth work in adjacent regulated categories translates directly. If you need alcohol-specific references, ask in the first conversation and we will hand-curate examples that match your category and engagement shape.
Our alcohol marketing consultant advises: Yes. Our growth operators have run programs across regulated categories with age-gating and brand-safety guardrails built in. The constraints add complexity but they do not require reinventing the marketing motion; they require operators who already understand the constraints walking into the brief.
Our alcohol marketing consultant advises: Spirits houses (premium and craft), wineries and wine clubs, breweries (craft and major), RTDs and hard seltzers, ready-to-drink cocktails, and adjacent lifestyle beverages. We have the most direct operator experience in spirits and wine; beer and RTD work draws on CPG and lifestyle adjacencies in the bench.
Yes, with the regulatory caveats. DTC alcohol commerce is state-by-state in the US and country-by-country internationally. We have run DTC eCommerce, subscription, and wine-club retention programs that account for the operational and compliance backbone DTC alcohol needs.
Two to four weeks is typical. We size the brief, match against availability inside the collective, and the operator is in the seat by the fourth week.
Yes. Our recruiting practice places senior marketing leaders across CPG, beverage, and lifestyle clients. Interim leaders frequently transition the permanent hire personally.
Directly. Chameleon Collective is a senior-only network with no account-management layer between you and the operator.
Related Services
Recruiting the permanent senior marketing hire for your alcohol brand
Our recruiting practice places marketing, brand, digital, CX, and sales leaders at the VP, SVP, and C-suite levels across CPG, beverage, lifestyle, and DTC clients. Interim leaders frequently transition the permanent hire personally, which materially lowers placement risk.
Get In Touch
Have an alcohol brand brief to size?
Work with a senior alcohol marketing consultant. Tell us the brand, the category context, and the marketing gap. We will respond within one business day with the right engagement shape and the operator who fits.
