Jagermeister turned a sleepy herbal liqueur into a US bar staple

Jagermeister was an old German herbal liqueur with little US pull when Sidney Frank took it on. Inc. later wrote that the drink had been selling about 500 cases a year when Frank began importing it in the early 1970s.

The decisive move was not a conventional prestige campaign. Frank sent promoters into bars, pushed cold shots, amplified earned media and made the brand a participatory nightlife ritual for younger drinkers.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Jagermeister sales increased from 600 cases a month in 1974, when Frank started selling it, to more than 2 million cases in 2005.

US sales rose from 600 cases a month in 1974 to more than 2 million cases in 2005.

The campaign changed the occasion of use from after-dinner digestif to social bar shot.

Promoters sold the ritual at the point of consumption, where trial could immediately become group behavior.

Frank accepted a polarizing taste and built memory around it instead of trying to make the product seem neutral.

A mature foreign brand can be reborn in a new market when distribution is paired with rituals people actually repeat.

The US revival made Jagermeister one of the clearest examples of an old European spirits brand being repositioned through occasion design. Frank used the same premiumizing instincts on Grey Goose, which Bacardi bought for an estimated $2.3 billion in 2004.