Most alcohol influencer marketing advice stops at "work with micro-influencers" and "be authentic". We wanted to see what the biggest alcohol brands actually do, so we pulled the 50 most recent sponsored posts for each of the most-searched alcohol brands in the US and looked at who posted, how each deal was disclosed, and which posts took off.

Here's why alcohol brands work with creators, the commonalities in their strategy, and a step-by-step way to run your own campaign.

Why alcohol brands use influencer marketing

Creators do a few things for alcohol brands that ads and product pages can't:

• A recipe gives people a reason to buy a bottle. People pick up a spirit to make a drink they saw. 14 of Campari's last 50 sponsored posts mention the Negroni, from Negroni Week in bars to Friendsgiving at home.
• Creators show the party, not just the bottle. Drinks get bought for an occasion, and creators can show it from the inside. @rachelhaneats set up a make-your-own Aperol Spritz bar at a welcome party and shared the recipe, and the post got 222k plays, about six times the creator's following.
• Local creators speak each market's language. Drinking habits change from country to country, so a global campaign rarely fits everywhere. 16 of Campari's last 50 sponsored posts tag a local account like Campari Spain, Campari Caribbean or Campari Italy instead of the global one.
• Food creators find new ways to use it. A spirit that shows up in a dessert or a dinner reaches people who don't follow cocktail accounts. @michelealex flambéed a cognac caramel orange croissant with Hennessy V.S.O.P for Lunar New Year, with the full recipe in the caption.

Top alcohol brands using influencer marketing

These are the most-searched alcohol brands in the US, according to Ahrefs. Deal types show how each post was disclosed (for example, with a paid partnership label or an ambassador hashtag). Creator tiers: micro 10k–50k followers, mid-tier 50k–500k, macro 500k+.

1. Don Julio: cocktails followers can make

13 of Don Julio's last 50 sponsored posts share a cocktail, like a Chili Crisp Paloma, a skinny Paloma or a spicy pineapple margarita, often with the recipe in the caption. Its "Por Amor" campaign (13 posts) took creators, many from South Africa and Nigeria, to the AMVCAs, the Durban July and World Cup matches. 22 of its 33 creators with a listed location are in the US, 10 of its 38 creators posted more than once, and none of the posts use a code.

• Creators: @thierryhenry (6.0M), @thelittle.ghost (58k) and @roses_cloud (270k) are among the creators who've posted for Don Julio.
• How posts were disclosed: 44 paid partnership, 3 gifted, 2 unspecified, 1 ambassador

What to take from it: Show the drink being served, with the recipe right there. @roses_cloud hosted a dinner for friends and poured Don Julio Negronis, with the measurements in the caption, and the post got 790k plays, Don Julio's most-viewed.

2. Aperol: courtside seats and a pop tour

12 of Aperol's last 50 sponsored posts come from tennis and padel, mostly courtside at the US Open, plus the ASB Classic in New Zealand and a padel tournament in South Africa. Another 6 follow Hilary Duff's Lucky Me Tour, including a post from Duff herself. Its creators are based in the US (18), Canada (4) and South Africa (3), 47 posts were disclosed as paid partnerships, and none use a code.

• Creators: @hilaryduff (28.2M), @lincandcanyon (329k) and @domrobxrts (132k) are among the creators who've posted for Aperol.
• How posts were disclosed: 47 paid partnership, 2 gifted, 1 unspecified

What to take from it: Book the fans, not just the headliner. @domrobxrts posted from Hilary Duff's tour with an Aperol Spritz and got 3.7M plays from an account with 132k followers.

3. Campari: film festivals and pop-ups

10 of Campari's last 50 sponsored posts come from film festivals, with creators on the red carpet at Cannes, Venice and TIFF. Its Campari Spritz Square pop-up toured Miami, Silver Lake and Nolita (7 posts), and Campari Southeast Asia hosted Discover Red in Singapore (6). Its creators are based in the US (11), the UK (6) and Singapore (6), 46 posts were disclosed as paid partnerships, and none use a code.

• Creators: @ibnicolearbour (2.2M), @holycityhandcraft (188k) and @didieryhc (44k) are among the creators who've posted for Campari.
• How posts were disclosed: 46 paid partnership, 3 unspecified, 1 gifted

What to take from it: Invite creators to learn the drink, then let them teach it. @didieryhc learned to make a Negroni at Campari's Simply Complex experience and recreated it at home, and the post got 298k plays, nearly seven times the creator's following.

4. Michelob Ultra: World Cup trophy handovers

11 of Michelob Ultra's last 50 sponsored posts are about its Superior Player of the Match trophy at the FIFA World Cup 2026, with creators handing it to players like Mo Salah and Erling Haaland. 44 posts mention the World Cup. Every creator had more than 50k followers (a median of 1.1M, the biggest of the five), 17 of its 23 creators with a listed location are in the US, and none of the posts use a discount code.

• Creators: @devonrodriguezart (9.5M), @gabbyygonz (480k) and @benblack (1.4M) are among the creators who've posted for Michelob Ultra.
• How posts were disclosed: 49 paid partnership, 1 unspecified

What to take from it: Give creators a job at the event, not just a ticket. @benblack presented Michelob Ultra's Superior Player of the Match trophy at the World Cup, and the post got 49.7k likes.

5. Hennessy: a new moment every few weeks

Hennessy booked 49 different creators for its last 50 sponsored posts, and its campaigns follow the calendar: Lunar New Year across Asia and Canada (6 posts), the Hennessy Roadhouse at the Houston rodeo (5) and a tie-in with Bad Bunny's DtMF (5). 19 posts tag Hennessy US, its creators are based in the US (19), the UK, South Africa and Malaysia (3 each), and none of the posts use a discount code.

• Creators: @tyla (13.9M), @looseunicorns (367k) and @michellepaaz (327k) are among the creators who've posted for Hennessy.
• How posts were disclosed: 43 paid partnership, 3 unspecified, 2 ambassador, 2 gifted

What to take from it: Build your own space inside an event your customers already go to. @michellepaaz posted from the Hennessy Roadhouse before heading into the Houston rodeo, and the post got 22.1k likes, about 7% of the creator's following.

What the top alcohol brands have in common

Looking across all 250 posts, four patterns stand out:

• The World Cup was the biggest moment. 51 of the 250 posts are about the FIFA World Cup or watching football, 45 of them from Michelob Ultra and 6 from Don Julio.
• Smaller creators get more out of their audience. Across 185 posts with visible likes, creators under 50k followers got a median of 1.9% of their followers liking the post. For creators above 50k, it was 0.7%.
• Age lines come standard. 122 of the 200 posts from Don Julio, Aperol, Campari and Hennessy include a line like "Please drink responsibly" or "Don't share w/ under 21".
• They sell hosting. 21 of the 250 posts are about a dinner, a watch party or a drink to make at home, led by Don Julio with 10 and Campari with 6.

How to run a alcohol influencer marketing campaign

Here's how to run a campaign step by step, using what the top alcohol brands do at each stage.

1. Pick one goal and one metric

Decide what the campaign is for before you pick a single creator, because the goal changes who you book, how you pay them and what you ask them to post. The top alcohol brands' posts lean toward reach. Michelob Ultra's trophy handovers and Campari's red carpets are built to be seen. Don Julio's cocktail recipes are the closest thing to a sales push, giving followers a reason to pick up a bottle this weekend.

• Sales: track revenue per creator with a unique link and code.
• Awareness: track views, saves and reach per post.
• Event sign-ups: if you run tastings or pop-ups, like Campari's Spritz Square, give each creator a tracked RSVP link and compare sign-ups per creator.

Pick one metric per campaign so you can compare creators fairly afterwards.

2. Find and vet creators who fit your brand

Follower count is the last thing to filter on. A creator with 15k followers filming a match-day snack spread with a Don Julio Paloma got 175k plays, more than eleven times their following, because it showed a watch party their followers could copy that weekend. Across all five brands, creators under 50k followers got nearly three times the likes relative to their audience.

Our survey found niche micro-creators are outperforming mega-influencers: nearly 60% of marketers said niche influencers performed better in 2025 than in 2024.

• Write down who buys your bottle (people who host dinner parties, sports fans planning a watch party, cocktail hobbyists) and look for creators living that life.
• Search Modash's database of 380M+ creators and filter by audience demographics (age, gender, location), bio keywords, engagement rate and fake-follower checks.
• Or describe that creator in plain language, like "creators who make cocktails for dinner parties at home", and Modash's AI creator search surfaces matching creators on the platform you're searching.

• Check who else they've posted for. @galagonzalez posted for both Campari and Hennessy. Modash shows which brands a creator has already posted sponsored content for.

You can also find alcohol influencers for free, for example by searching the hashtags your buyers follow.

3. Choose the deal type

Paid posts are almost the only deal type in alcohol. Michelob Ultra disclosed 49 of its last 50 posts as paid partnerships, Aperol 47 and Campari 46. Across all 250 posts, only 3 were labeled as ambassador posts, and none as affiliate.

• Gifting works for invitations to something followers can't get into, like the gifted Cannes Film Festival post in Campari's mix.
• Paid posts suit campaigns that have to land on a date, like a tournament, a tour stop or a holiday.
• Affiliate is rare in alcohol, and none of the 250 posts were labeled as affiliate posts. Check what your markets allow before you offer commission on alcohol sales.
• Ambassador deals suit creators who already make drinks on camera every week, like the cocktail creators Don Julio booked more than once.

Commission-only is getting harder to sell, though. Over 23% of marketers in our survey said creators would take performance pay only if a flat fee came with it. If you run tiers, the average commission tiers in our affiliate research were 10%, 14% and 19%, and brands with more than one tier had more active affiliates.

4. Brief the content formats that work in alcohol

The captions from the top alcohol brands point to three formats that carry most of their creator content:

• Cocktail recipes. Don Julio's and Campari's creators share Palomas, margaritas and Negronis, often with the measurements in the caption. Ask for a recipe followers can make for their next party.
• Access followers can't get. Aperol's creators sit courtside at the US Open, and Campari's walk the red carpet at Cannes. Give creators a view their followers would pay for.
• Holidays and seasons. Hennessy's creators toast Lunar New Year, Campari's pour Negronis at Friendsgiving and Aperol's celebrate "Aperolidays". Tie briefs to the occasions people buy a bottle for.

Whatever the format, give creators one hashtag to use every time, like #donjuliopartner or #hennessypartner, and the exact responsible-drinking and age line each market requires.

5. Launch with tracked links and time-limited codes

None of the top alcohol brands used discount codes in these posts. Michelob Ultra ran World Cup ticket giveaways instead (5 posts), and Campari's creators sent followers to its pop-ups.

Codes also leak. In our affiliate marketing research, 47.6% of marketers said they struggle with code poaching, where a creator's code ends up on coupon sites.

• Give every creator a tracked link for everyday posts, and add a code only for launches and sales.
• Put an end date in the caption so followers know the offer won't last.
• If creators use "comment for the link", make sure the link they send by DM is their tracked link.

In Modash, each creator gets a tracked link and a code tied to your Shopify data, so sales from DMs, bios and stories all count toward the right person. Commission is calculated on net revenue after refunds and returns.

6. Rebook your best creators

The top alcohol brands rarely rebook: only 33 of their 200 creators posted more than once. That's a missed chance in a category where people stick with a bottle they trust, and a creator who keeps pouring the same brand at every party is the best proof. Michelob Ultra is the exception, with 12 of its 26 creators posting more than once.

Most marketers want to do more of this. In our influencer marketing trends survey, over 60% said they plan to invest more in long-term partnerships, but only 54% actually ran more of them last year.

• Start new creators on a single post, then offer a longer deal to the ones who hit your metric from step 1.
• Use revenue per creator, not likes, to decide who gets rebooked. Modash's campaign dashboard shows revenue, orders and ROAS for each creator.
• Give rebooked creators something new each time, like a seasonal cocktail, a limited bottle or an event to attend, so their posts don't repeat.

Where alcohol creator programs go wrong

The top brands avoid a few mistakes that trip up smaller programs:

• Booking creators with an underage audience. A creator can be 30 and still have a following full of teenagers, and alcohol advertising codes expect most of the audience to be of legal drinking age. Check each creator's audience age before you book, not just their own age.
• Offering commission-only deals to established creators. In our survey, 63% of marketers said influencers were open to becoming affiliates in 2024. In 2025 that fell to 26%. When you reach out to established creators, offer a flat fee plus commission rather than commission alone.
• Running the affiliate program on autopilot. In our affiliate research, marketers who were "very involved" with their affiliates had 71.5% of them active. "Very hands-off" marketers had 10%. Affiliates post when you give them a reason to, so check in every month with something new to share. For alcohol, that could be a new bottle, a seasonal cocktail, or an event to attend.
• Sending affiliates old product. 93% of marketers gift products to affiliates, but almost 30% don't refresh them when something new launches. Send every new release and limited bottle to your creators before it reaches shelves.
• Showing drinking you can't advertise. A joke about drinking and driving or a clip of someone downing shots can break advertising rules and get the post pulled. List what creators can't show in the brief, like driving, heavy drinking or alcohol near sports performance, and check every post before it goes live.

FAQ

How much does alcohol influencer marketing cost?

It depends on platform, following and engagement. Micro-influencers often work for free product plus a fee in the low hundreds per post, or an affiliate commission. Larger creators charge more. Many brands start with gifting plus commission to test fit before committing to flat fees. To estimate what a specific creator is likely to charge, drop their handle into our free Instagram influencer pricing calculator.

Which platform is best for alcohol influencer marketing?

Instagram carries most alcohol creator work, and every sponsored post we analyzed for the five most-searched alcohol brands ran there. TikTok's branded content rules restrict alcohol, so check what's allowed in your markets before you plan creator work there.

Which alcohol brands use influencer marketing?

Don Julio, Aperol, Campari, Michelob Ultra and Hennessy are the most-searched alcohol brands in the US, and all of them run active creator programs. See the breakdown above for who each one works with.

Should alcohol brands work with micro or macro influencers?

It depends on your goal. A launch chasing awareness leans bigger, a conversion play leans smaller and more trusted. In the alcohol posts we analyzed, creators under 50k followers got nearly three times the likes relative to their audience size, so most brands should build their base with micro-influencers (10k–50k followers) and add bigger names for launches.

How do I measure alcohol influencer marketing?

Track sales per creator with unique links and codes, then compare revenue against what you paid (fees, product and commission). Our engagement rate calculator and fake follower checker help you vet creators before you spend, and our guide to influencer marketing ROI covers the full calculation.

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