This week Master’s degree in marketing is near and dear to my heart, if not to my taste buds.
As a naturalized citizen of Chicago, it is my duty and honor to introduce you to one of the city’s most loathsome — and most beloved — substances.
Herbal taste Jeppson’s Malört (Swedish for “wormwood”, the drink’s only flavour) was (in)famously described by comedian John Hodgman as “pencil scraps and a broken heart”.
To find out how CH Distillery sells a liqueur that’s only reliably available to 2.7 million people and tastes like burning rubber, I spoke to Anna Sokratovbrand manager at Jeppson’s Malört at CH Distillery in Chicago.
Socrates has the enviable job of getting people excited to drink what he calls “the worst drink in the world.” In 2023, Sokratov co-created an advertising campaign featuring photos of people tasting Malört for the first time, with the slogan “Don’t drink. Responsible.”
Lest you think any of this is an exaggeration, know that Malört was legal during Prohibition because it was convincingly sold as a medicine… stomach worms.
Lesson 1: Build a community around shared experiences.
At first sip, Malört doesn’t seem like an exercise in community building, unless that community is your enemy.
But Sokratov describes a scene familiar to any Chicagoan who’s seen the inside of a bar: One person takes their first shot of Malört (this isn’t sipping alcohol, trust), and everyone around them cheers. Soon, everyone wants to try it. I’m sorry now.
“Whenever you talk about Malört, people always share some crazy story or [give you] the most obscene way to describe the taste,” she says. “And in a weird way, it creates a community.”
Sokratov also points out that most Chicagoans don’t enjoy Malört alone after a long day at the office. It’s more of a rite of passage, “a way to connect with people through stories about what it tastes like.”
“We thrive on people talking about us and sharing good and bad Malörts,” says Sokratov.
Take a recent campaignMalörted,” which compares the Malört clip to voting for a candidate you don’t like (not mentioned: that you have to hold your nose to both).
It’s not just a funny ad, but it supports local businesses—Malört drinkers can get an “I Voted”-style sticker at more than a hundred bars and liquor stores across Chicago.
Lesson 2: Break the fourth wall.
The first Malört commercial I ever saw was in 2022, in the first season of the Chicago TV show Bearof all places. Sokratov says it was one of the first ads they ever ran—almost a century earlier, Malört relied on word of mouth and Chicagoans playing pranks on out-of-town guests.
Because Malört marketing is such a new phenomenon, Sokratov feels a lot of freedom to be fun, to be unusual, to be experimental. (In fact, one of the people he looks to for inspiration is a former marketing master Greg Fass of Liquid Death.)
At this point, it is already an old belief that authenticity drives consumer loyalty. But less is said about what authenticity is looks like like. “People are really looking for brands that break that fourth wall,” says Sokratov. “They want to see the people behind the brand.”
Former and current employees appear in a series of ads with Malört’s faces (Google it), which are underlined by the slogan “Don’t enjoy yourself. Responsible.” Malört can be many things, but it is neither dishonest nor indirect.
Lesson 3: One size does not fit all.
Sokratov raises an eyebrow at the saying that marketing is about telling stories. Tel the story — plural.
She says it’s a mistake to think that Malört’s taste means there isn’t a lot of nuance in its marketing. “One size fits all swimming suits everyone when it comes to something like this.”
“It’s easy to try to fit this brand into a single category of ‘everyone thinks it’s just in bad taste,'” Sokratov tells me. “But it’s much more complex than that.” Although Malört employees joked that they just put a photo of the toilet on the ad, they would rather explore the multitude of taste experiences.
Part of the fun of trying Malört for the first time is trying to describe the taste. Sokratov heard “gasoline” and “used Band-Aid”, which sound like quite different tastes, although I’m not willing to confirm.
Redditors they described the taste as “turpentine”, “old tire and bug spray” and “all your hopes and dreams extinguished at once”. 2018 Chicago Magazine he cited such poetry as “the liquid equivalent of a Chicago winter” and “a slap in the face”.
For the record, I like Malört, but I think it tastes like grapefruit and alcohol with a sharp burnt tire taste.
If taste is experienced so differently, “then the story we’re telling should be different from many other people’s,” says Sokratov. Throughout its history, Malört has not been shy about using different descriptions of its products, which include such gems as “Malört: Kick your mouth in the balls.”
Not every ad campaign will be a viral success, but “we’re still learning about the people who drink it.”
Lingering questions
This issue of Masters in Marketing introduces a feature we call Lingering questions. The rules of the game are simple: each person we interview gives us a question to ask the next marketing master. They don’t know who it will be (and sometimes neither do we).
Since Malört’s Anna Sokratov is the first in this series, a colleague from Chicago and I came up with a question to kick things off:
Malört is one of Chicago’s mascots. What would Malört’s mascot be and why?
Sokratov: 31 gallon galvanized steel trash can with lid. Both are perceived as unattractive or disgusting, and can last a long time – similar to the lingering taste of Malört.
Sokratov gave us a question for our next Marketing Master to answer in next week’s newsletter, and I promise you won’t want to miss their answer: What unconventional marketing approach would you like to take and how would you do it? something haven’t you worked before?
Subscribe below to see next week’s answer and the next long-running question.
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/masters-in-marketing-malort
