How Botivo turned vibes into a marketing strategy

A branded stand.

A logo wall.

Some free samples.

Maybe a tote bag.

It’s an age-old story of how a brand optimises for visibility instead of memorability, then everyone goes home and forgets it happened.

But premium non-alcoholic aperitif brand Botivo has built a genuinely distinctive events strategy by obsessing over how their customers EXPERIENCE their brand activations. They understood consumers could smell transactional marketing instantly, so instead leant into the idea that events are emotional architecture. When done well, they create memory structures around your brand that ads alone can’t replicate.

We had the pleasure of chatting to Botivo’s Head of Marketing, Kate Emlyn Jones, about the secrets to their success.

She spilled all on:

🍹How to turn brand relationships into collaborations rather than one-off activations

🍹Why showing up locally has helped Botivo build trust and momentum at events

🍹How choosing the right moments and audiences has delivered more impact than chasing scale

…and more – keep reading for all the juicy details! 👇

The best brand positioning creates behavioural consistency

Botivo’s events work because they’re deeply aligned with the brand’s positioning. Kate explained that for Botivo everything centres around this:

“We’re a pleasure brand, not a moderation one.”

They market:

• enjoyment

• craft

• atmosphere

• indulgence

• social connection

And they don’t try to squeeze in any messaging around restraint, wellness, self-control or sobriety, because staying focused and consistent on the “joy” element matters to them more.

“We don’t talk about feeling good tomorrow. We want people to drink Botivo because it’s delicious.”

Too many brands say one thing in campaigns and another in real-world experiences, but Botivo activations feel coherent because they extend the brand world naturally.

The yellow piano. The drag performers. The beer festival singalongs. The Christmas carols. None of it feels random because it all ladders back to pleasure, sociability, and shared experiences.

“Vibes” are actually a serious marketing strategy

Kate repeatedly referenced “vibes,” which sounds abstract, but it isn’t. What Kate is talking about is emotional resonance.

“You’re much more powerful if you really resonate to a small number of people than being invisible to loads.”

In the age of performance marketing, everyone is hell-bent for leather on impressions and clicks, but Botivo optimise for memorability, emotional intensity and sensory association. At the London Craft Beer Festival, for example, they prioritised creating a spectacle over hard-selling products.

“We had hundreds and hundreds of people all singing Oasis around our yellow piano.”

Then they sampled drinks into that emotional moment. Crucially, the drinks didn’t happen before or after, but during.

“If you’re just given a sample of Botivo to try, you’re just remembering that… whereas if you’ve got something sensory that’s also happening… the memorability is much higher.”

Humans don’t store isolated brand messages very well, but what we do store is emotionally charged multi-sensory moments. Leveraging this psychology has been pivotal to Botivo’s marketing strategy.

The smartest events create participation, not spectatorship

The yellow piano wasn’t just entertainment. Botivo recognised that the general public love to get involved and play, and tapped into participation infrastructure. Most branded events are passive experiences where people watch, consume, then leave. But the best activations invite people to co-create the atmosphere.

At the beer festival people sang. At Christmas people carolled. At local venues communities gathered together. And importantly, Botivo didn’t force engagement. They created an environment where participation felt organic. If the moment something feels staged or overly orchestrated, the energy dies.

Kate even rejected tactics like forced QR-code signups because, in her words, “you’re immediately taking away any vibe.”

The deeper lesson is that the best marketing doesn’t try to force attention, but creates environments people genuinely want to be part of. That requires a shift from:

controlling experiences → facilitating experiences.

It means engineering moments.

And increasingly, that’s what the best brands do.

Great collaborations borrow trust

Most brand collaborations are lazy audience swaps but Botivo approaches them differently. Kate described partnerships as “borrowing cultural equity.” This framing shows that the real value isn’t just exposure but association.

For example:

Maison François gave Botivo:

“Real credibility within the hospitality scene.”

Berry Bros & Rudd helped establish:

“That someone who is the oldest wine merchant in the UK really backs our liquid.”

Marketers massively underestimate how powerful trust transfer is. Consumers don’t deeply evaluate every brand from first principles. They use shortcuts:

“If this respected brand trusts you, maybe I should too.”

This is your sign to swap out paid media for strategic partnerships that can accelerate your brand positioning faster than you can blink.

Warm audiences beat cold audiences

Kate repeatedly emphasised going where your audience already gathers.

“Go to them. Don’t make them find you.”

Especially start-ups with limited budget, this is a great way to find customers. Like with brand collaborations, you’re tapping into existing ecosystems. For Botivo it was

• restaurants

• delis

• hospitality communities

• beer festivals

• local neighbourhoods

And critically, they choose audience adjacency over obviousness. The best example of this is London Craft Beer Festival. 

On paper, a non-alcoholic aperitif brand at a beer festival sounds ridiculous, but Botivo understood the overlap.

“We know Botivo drinkers care about craft.”

That insight unlocked the opportunity, and because they were the only non-beer brand there, they really stood out. It’s a valuable lesson that the best growth opportunities often exist in adjacent categories where audience overlap is high and direct competition is low.

Small communities often beat big activations

Kate shared that when Botivo turned up to Big Feastival, it turned out to be a mistake. They assumed a big audience = big opportunity, but Botivo was too small and too unknown at the time. Without existing awareness or a compelling hook, people just walked past.

Compare that to the smaller local activations that succeeded:

• Fink’s

• neighbourhood wine bars

• local pubs

• community cafés

Those events worked because there was already emotional infrastructure.

“Places and spaces which already have people going there and therefore an invite list written for you.”

The strongest communities already exist. Great marketers plug into them.

Some marketing ROI cannot be cleanly measured

Kate admitted that with this kind of marketing, sometimes ROI can’t be cleanly measured. Things like emotional affinity, word-of-mouth, memorability, cultural positioning and brand warmth can’t easily be captured.

That doesn’t stop them from trying, though. Botivo still experiment with measurement, using awareness surveys, campaign tracking, and observing sales lift in specific locations – but they don’t let imperfect attribution kill good brand building.

That’s important. Too many marketers only invest in what’s easy to measure, which often means short-term performance activity. But the strongest brands invest heavily in things that compound invisibly.