Athletic Brewing Hires a Wine Marketer to Sell Beer Without Alcohol

The most interesting thing about Athletic Brewing's new marketing chief is where he comes from. The nonalcoholic brewer has appointed Dan Kleinman chief marketing officer after a months-long search, hiring him out of Deutsch Family Wine and Spirits, where he helped build Josh Cellars into a category force.

The timing is the brief. Athletic Brewing said earlier this year that it is raising national media spend by 120% — a scale-up that turns a challenger brand's marketing function into something closer to a mass-market operation, with all the media discipline that implies.

Josh Cellars is a useful piece of pedigree here. It grew by behaving like a consumer brand rather than a wine label: consistent packaging, broad distribution, advertising aimed at people who do not read tasting notes. Nonalcoholic beer is at a similar hinge point, moving from a niche defined by abstention to a mainstream occasion product.

Which is the harder job than it looks. Athletic Brewing largely created the modern category and now has to defend it against every legacy brewer shipping a zero-proof line extension. Winning that fight is less about explaining what nonalcoholic beer is, and more about owning the moment someone reaches for one.