Find out which videos sold cases.
For marketing teams at spirits, beer, seltzer and beverage brands. Your depletions, retail data, direct sales and ad accounts all sit in different places. Arcus connects them into one place you own, adds what drinkers say about you online, and tells you what to keep, test and stop.
Free, no card. Pick a question and we answer it with your own numbers.
Arcus
You asked: What drove sales in week 3?
Week 3: sales up 18%. 1,240 TikTok and Reddit posts about one unpaid creator. Next: test paying them in half your regions.
- From your sales + CRM
- From TikTok + Reddit
Why nobody sees the whole picture.
Drinks marketing runs on a long chain. You sell to a distributor, the distributor sells to a retailer or a bar, and the drinker buys a can or a pour somewhere you will never see. So the picture reaches you in pieces, late and in different shapes. Depletions come from distributor reports. Retail scan data sits with the sales team, where you buy it. Your site and delivery partners hold direct sales. Email and loyalty lists sit with CRM. And your ad accounts, partners and creators report views, engagement and “sales” from inside the ad platforms, the same week the campaign runs.
With every piece in a different place, nobody can see which spend is working. Each ad platform gives itself credit, and two channels can count the same drinker. A summer campaign can take credit for summer. A region that gained new distribution the same month can make any media running there look brilliant. None of that means the work failed. It means nobody has lined the results up against the numbers that pay your bills.
Arcus connects those pieces into one place you own, inside your own setup: depletions, retail data, direct sales, CRM, ad accounts, social accounts and agency reports, plus what drinkers say on TikTok, Reddit, Instagram and Google. The first question is usually simple: what worked this summer? Then you can ask what nobody could answer before: which regions are selling through and which are just stocking up, which flavors drinkers ask for before the shelf has them, and which spend moved cases, not just views.
What you know, plus what people say.
We connect every piece into one place you own, inside your own setup. The answer draws on both halves.
What you know
- Depletions
- Retail scan data
- Direct and delivery sales
- Email and loyalty lists
- Ad accounts
- Agency reports
What people say
- TikTok
- Facebook groups
- Google Search
- Yelp
- News and trade press
What teams like yours tell us.
Sales arrive late and in pieces
Depletions come from distributors, scan data comes from retail, and bar sales often come from nowhere at all. By the time the numbers land, the campaign is over and the recap is already written.
Every channel counts its own way
Your ad accounts, creators and partners each report with their own credit rules. Add them together and the total can be bigger than what you sold.
Seasons and distribution do the heavy lifting
Summer, holidays and big sports moments lift the whole category. New doors and new placements lift your brand. A campaign that runs at the same time can look like the cause when it was along for the ride.
Views don’t tell you what to make
A recap that says the campaign hit its view target doesn’t say which posts did it, or why. Without a read of what was on screen, the next brief starts from taste and the loudest opinion in the room.
The numbers that matter.
The ones that show whether marketing worked in spirits and beverage, and where each one comes from today.
| Measure | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Depletions by region and week | What distributors sold through to retailers and bars. It is the closest thing most drinks brands have to a sales line, and it comes from your distributor reports. We line it up with when and where the media ran. |
| Retail sell-through | What drinkers bought off the shelf, from retail scan data or retailer portals where you have them. It tells you whether depletions are turning into purchases or sitting in a back room. |
| Sales per store per week | How fast you sell in the stores that already carry you. It separates growth that came from media from growth that came from new distribution, and it is the number a retail buyer looks at in a category review. |
| Creator code and link use | How often a creator’s code or link turns up in your own sales data, and how much of it came from coupon sites. Codes show up on direct and delivery sales, so we note where they can’t see in-store buying. |
| Search interest for your name and flavors | From Google Search, by region. A rise in people searching your name where the campaign ran is an early sign of demand, and it shows up long before depletions do. |
| Shares and saves by type of post | From your own social accounts. Views tell you a post was served. Shares tell you someone sent it to a friend, and in drinks that is often where the occasion gets planned. |
A trick with the can got watched. A moment with friends got shared.
We watched and sorted every Instagram and Facebook post from one summer campaign for a hard seltzer brand: 39 on Instagram and 29 on Facebook. Hosting hacks, a trick with the can you could copy tonight, had a median of 19,188 views against an account average of 8,148. The most shared post was about a moment people were in, with 409 shares on 8,000 views, while Facebook averaged 1.2 shares per post. For a drinks brand, that splits the brief in two: one kind of post gets watched, and another gets sent to the group chat where the plans get made.
Where your audience talks.
The places we usually read for spirits and beverage brands. What people say there ends up in the same place as your own sales and customers.
TikTokWhich serves, hacks and occasions drinkers copy, and which posts get sent around. Comments show the words people use for your flavors.
InstagramHow your posts compare with each other and with competitors on views and shares. In our hard seltzer report, Instagram is where the shares lived.
RedditLong, frank threads on flavor, price, calories, hangovers and what people switched from. Drinkers say things there they would never post under your ad.
Facebook groupsParty planning, local events and an older crowd. In our hard seltzer report, Facebook watched how-tos and almost never shared them.
Google SearchSearch interest for your name, your flavors and where to buy you, by region, which often moves before sales data arrives.
YelpHow the bars and venues that pour you get talked about, and whether your brand comes up by name in their reviews.- News and trade pressDistribution wins, competitor launches and category moves that can explain a jump in your numbers before anyone credits it to media.
What we look for first.
The patterns that most often explain the gap between what each channel reports and what your own numbers show.
- 1Brand search riding alongWe check how much of a campaign’s credited sales came from people typing your name. Those drinkers were already on their way, so we separate them before anyone takes credit.
- 2New doors inside campaign regionsWe compare where the media ran with where distribution changed. If both happened in the same place at the same time, we say so. Before the result goes in a deck, we suggest a test: run the media in some regions, hold it back in others, and compare sales.
- 3Codes on coupon sitesWe look for creator codes turning up on coupon and deal sites. Sales through a leaked code get credited to the creator, even when the buyer never saw the video.
- 4One post carrying a whole formatWe check whether a content type’s numbers depend on a single hit. In our hard seltzer report, one post carried 77% of a format’s Instagram shares, and the format was the second weakest on the account without it.
Questions worth asking.
Six questions for your next budget meeting, in your industry’s terms.
How to test before you move budgetTry it free.Then we build it for you.
Try it free
Pick a question, like “which flavor should lead the summer push?” We answer it with your own numbers, from depletions and retail data to direct sales, plus what drinkers say online. You get a few slides with the answer on top. No card.
Walk through it together
We go through the answer on a 30-minute call, including where your sales data is too thin to call and what it would take to fill the gap.
We build it for you
If you go ahead, we connect your distributor files, retail data, direct sales, CRM, ad accounts and social accounts, plus what drinkers say online. It all goes into one place you own, inside your own setup: your own data lake. We build it around your brand, with your regions, seasons and flavors written in, so every answer knows your business. It takes about three months. Before we connect anything, we agree with you on exactly what we can access. You approve each step, and answers arrive along the way.
Ask anything
Any leader on your team can ask, and the answer sees the whole picture. Each one is a few slides: the answer on top, the evidence, then what to keep, test and stop. Regular answers can also arrive on a schedule you choose.
Questions spirits and beverage teams ask
More in the full FAQ, or ask us on a call.
Did the summer campaign sell, or just get views?
We line the campaign up against your own sales over the same weeks. When you need proof it caused them, we run a simple test: show it in some regions and not others, then compare.
Which creators move product?
We line up each creator’s codes, links and post dates with your own sales, and count each sale once. You see who sold, and who to test before you book them again.
What are people saying about us when we’re not in the room?
We read Reddit threads, TikTok comments, Facebook groups and reviews, count what comes up, and line it up with what sells.
Most of our sales happen at retail and in bars. Can you still tell what worked?
Yes. We use the sales data that exists: distributor depletions, retail scan data, and your own site or delivery partners. We line it up with where and when the media ran, region by region, and tell you where it’s too thin to call. When you need to know what caused a lift, we run the media in some regions and hold it back in others, then compare.
What are depletions, and why do they matter for marketing?
Depletions are what your distributors sell through to retailers and bars. They are the most common sales line in drinks, and they are a fair thing to measure campaigns against, because the ad platforms can’t see them.
Can creator codes measure in-store sales?
Only a slice of them. A code shows up where someone types it, usually on direct or delivery sales. We check codes against your own numbers, look for codes leaking to coupon sites, and use regional tests for the in-store side.
Is social listening useful for a beverage brand?
Yes, when it counts specific things and lines them up with sales. We count the flavors, occasions and serves drinkers mention, where they mention them, and whether those regions sell more.
Do you work with alcohol brands that sell through distributors?
Yes. Arcus works from the data you have, and for most alcohol brands that means distributor and retail data instead of direct sales. If your distributor agreements limit how that data can be used, tell us before we start and we’ll work within them.
Other teams we work with
See the wholepicture.
Pick the question you’re least sure about. We answer it with your own numbers and what people say online, then walk you through it in 30 minutes. Free, no card.