A version of this commentary first appeared in Business Insider on 12 August 2026 as part of Lara O’Reilly’s article.
Stephanie Kiens, Growth Director
Patrón’s new billboards misspell “artificial” on purpose. Others drop the brand name entirely, letting a bottle-shaped swarm of bees do the talking. It’s sharp, disciplined work, and it’s earning the brand exactly the attention it should: press coverage, conversation, a genuine point of difference in a shrinking category. US spirits sales fell 2.2% by value last year. Tequila and mezcal dropped 4.1%. Super-premium fell 6.1%, harder than the category around it. In that environment, getting noticed at all is a win.
At Elmwood, our work with brands on what earns a brand premium status today became the basis of our whitepaper, “New Codes of Premium“. One of the clearest findings: what we call Radical Clarity, transparency about ingredients, sourcing, and process, has become bare minimum for premium credibility across categories, from craft spirits to skincare. Patrón’s “additive-free” fight is a textbook case of a brand claiming that code, even under real regulatory pressure. It’s the right instinct, executed with real creative discipline.
But Radical Clarity is one code. Our whitepaper points to a second, sitting right alongside it, that’s arguably the bigger growth lever for Patrón specifically: Cultural Insider, the sense that a brand understands its place in culture and in a consumer’s identity, not just its own recognizability.
Patrón is already reaching for this. The Hacienda Patrón pop-up at Lollapalooza. Grammy sponsorship. Festival-sized minis of a $165 bottle. Those aren’t just activations but early signals of exactly the code our research says matters most for premium brands: earning a place in culture, not just visibility within it. The opportunity is to make that the throughline of the strategy rather than a supporting campaign running alongside the packaging story.
There’s a specific version of this opportunity that’s easy to miss. Patrón’s fame was built in a particular cultural moment, and that moment is having a real resurgence today. Gen Z is already reviving 2010s aesthetics and sounds. Most heritage brands treat their own history as something to modernize away from. Patrón has the rarer option of treating its history as the asset, leaning into the specific texture of the era that made it iconic, rather than a generic “we sponsor music now” posture that any spirits brand with a budget could adopt.
The instinct to stay consistent is also the right one. Patrón’s team is smart not to abandon a campaign just because they’re tired of it before the consumer has even seen it once, that’s one of the most common mistakes brands make. The next step is simply widening what they’re being consistent about. Radical Clarity earns trust. Cultural Insider status earns desire, and desire is what a shrinking, crowded category needs most.
Put together, that’s a winning hand: a brand with a genuine transparency story, real cultural equity to draw on, and early instincts already pointing at both. The brands that will win the premium tequila fight from here are the ones that can hold a functional claim and a cultural one at the same time. Patrón has the ingredients for both already in play.
