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Category: Case Studies
April 24, 2025 / Miles Marmo
How Agency Squid Helped Build White Claw’s Billion-Dollar Brand
When White Claw Hard Seltzer burst onto the scene in 2016, it didn’t just create a new beverage—it created a category. Behind that meteoric rise was Agency Squid, the brand-building partner that helped transform White Claw into a billion-dollar cultural phenomenon. From redefining the ready-to-drink (RTD) alcohol space to developing a viral marketing strategy that captured the attention of Millennials and Gen Z, Agency Squid’s disruptive approach to product innovation, brand positioning, and lifestyle-driven creative set the standard for hard seltzer marketing success.
Role
Research
Strategy
Consulting
Consumer Segmentation
Creative Direction
Creative Production
Deliverables
Marketing & Brand Strategy
Brand Messaging & Art Direction
Copywriting & Brand Voice
Videography & Photography
Digital Media
Social Media Content & Management
Go-To-Market Strategy
Omni-Channel Campaign Creation
Website Design
UI/UX
Client
Mark Anthony Group | White Claw Hard Seltzer
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The Scope
When Mark Anthony Brands—best known for Mike’s Hard Lemonade—set out to launch White Claw Hard Seltzer, they weren’t just creating a new product; they were pioneering an entirely new category. At the time, spiked sparkling seltzer was a niche, regional segment within the flavored malt beverage market. The vision? A gender-neutral, better-for-you alcoholic beverage positioned as an alternative to light beer for health-conscious, active consumers. The mission? Entrust Agency Squid to bring the White Claw brand to life and make it the leader in the emerging RTD alcohol space.
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The Challenge: Build a brand, Create a category
The Challenge: Build a Brand, Create a Category Before our engagement, hard seltzer lacked national awareness. Our challenge was two-fold: first, to establish White Claw branding as culturally relevant to a wellness-driven, flavor-seeking consumer; second, to educate and convert those consumers who were new to the idea of a “better-for-you” alcoholic beverage. The goal was not just to market a product—but to create a movement.
The Solution: Where Strategy meets Disruption
As White Claw’s brand agency partner, we studied fast-growing health-forward CPG categories like yogurt and snacks to better understand emerging consumer behaviors and messaging cues. We then developed a full brand framework and visual identity for White Claw that emphasized simplicity, energy, and approachability. From digital storytelling and SEO-friendly website design to social-first campaigns and national shopper marketing activations, our integrated approach helped differentiate White Claw in a crowded space. We positioned White Claw as a bold, black-and-white lifestyle brand—owning the narrative for modern refreshment. Our content strategy included SEO-driven blogs, search engine marketing (SEM), and social media campaigns aligned to Millennial and Gen Z mindsets. The RTD challenge was finding margins in lower volume launches. Spirit-based RTD’s were the trend, but tax implications made profitability difficult without scale. We ended up building a brand platform with the flexibility to launch with both hard seltzers and RTD’s to test the market, with an added option to go the non-alcoholic route in the future once equity was built behind the brand. Aspirations to take the beverage market by storm drove the decision to test in key markets to understand adoption, and evolve the business from there.
White Claw broke all the laws of booze marketing to win the hard seltzer war
Fast Company
BRAND LAUNCH
Brand Foundation
We worked to develop a balance between gender neutrality and health and wellness knowing the budding lifestyle trends were across broader demographics. Because of the age and lifestyle of our target audience, we used the voices of the health-conscious community to tell their authentic stories on how they relate to the brand.
Website
We designed and built the site to educate consumers on the better-for-you category while focusing on the White Claw brand attributes using animations for all devices to pique interest and keep users engaged. As brand awareness grew and matured, the site evolved to be more comprehensive by accounting for new partnerships, activations, and stories.
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Campaign (Cont.)
Digital first approach
With an unproven brand and category, there was a desire to test the presona and messaging theory by creating different assets across different consumer personas to determine what would perform best. Based on our target audiences, appropriate social channels were chosen to engage consumers and to showcase products in simple settings and highlight attributes with different creative variations to give us a sense of performance to scale creative accordingly.
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Results
Initial Launch
With zero paid media in its first three weeks, the White Claw website—built and optimized by Agency Squid—attracted 15,000+ unique visitors with high engagement and low bounce rates. The brand gained national retail distribution in just 4 weeks, educating distributors, retailers, and consumers to make it the most successful brand launch in the history of Mark Anthony Group.
Growing the Brand
As the hard seltzer market began to see new entrants and become more defined, White Claw Hard Seltzer saw 300%+ growth in the first 3 years, making them the number one hard seltzer with almost 60% market share. Since the successful launch, we continue to support White Claw. We have supported the launch of new flavors and products, defined brand strategy, and executed creative with the bold use of black and white and among other brand initiatives that maintain Mark Anthony Brands as the leader in the hard seltzer category.
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