Peleton/Aviation Gin

Like your year-end Christmukkah office party, 2019's final edition of 'The Speed Rail' is a mash-up of themes but, like your party, with booze at its centre. 

For those of you who missed it, Peleton, the high-end stationary cycling company, had an IPO and not long after came out with a TV ad that was mildly sexist but completely lacking in self-awareness. The Internet broke in response as the entire world projected its new-found 'wokefullness' on the company. Cue a 15%, or $1bn, drop in market cap -- an unfair and extreme reaction in my opinion. 

The connection to spirits comes from Ryan Reynolds' decision to cast the same actor who played the better half of Mr. Insufficiently-Woke in the Peleton ad in a cheeky Aviation response. That response also went viral and everyone was delighted because now the wrongs of the world have been righted: No one will ever again try to sell a $2,500 cycle with a monthly fee of $40 without first running it by the Chief Politically Correct Officer (hereafter a human with the title C2PO doing a droid's job). 

But this got me thinking about Aviation Gin. What is its purpose as a brand other than a vehicle that is extremely successful at putting out cheeky YouTube videos. There was the one with Sir Richard Branson on its launch on Virgin Air and a few others. But they lack a common thread and a sense of coherence. Guinness did some brilliant work at short notice during the Rugby World Cup but it was keeping with an overall theme of sport and teamwork. If the number of Peleton memes and the recent visceral reaction is any indication, it has done a good job building a tribe of followers (recent ad and questions on valuation notwithstanding).

So with Aviation's purported mid-9 digit valuation, do we need a new metric (EV per viral video or eyeballs, for those whose memory goes back to 1999) to justify its expectations. Or is it enough to take a spirit and add one part celebrity à la Casamigos.

Having seen the insides of the transaction and the commercials for the latter, I am going to make a "bold" prediction for 2020: Aviation is not going to trade near its asking price. The consumer awareness may now be high as a result of said viral videos but a celebrity vehicle without organic consumer pull/proposition is a bit too close to being a straight-up influencer-brand, something else that is increasingly un-woke in the world of CPG.