What do you do when everyone thinks your product tastes awful? Embrace the hate of course! Hundred-year old brand Malört is a liqueur hailing from Chicago which sees its flavour not as a liability but as one of its greatest strengths. We caught up with Anna Sokratov, head of marketing at Jeppson’s Malört, to find out how they do what they do and to try a taste of Malört for ourselves. Spoiler alert: it’s definitely an experience.

What’s the story behind Malört?

We can start all the way back in the 1920s with a man named Carl Jeppson, a Swedish immigrant who came to Chicago and brought Malört here. “Malört” is the Swedish word for wormwood, which is the main ingredient that's in Malört — it's what gives it that really bitter flavour. He was trying to make ends meet in Chicago and was selling Malört during the Prohibition era under the guise of medicine, which, in some ways, it is. It was known to help cure stomach bugs and parasites. But as the story goes, the authorities come knocking on his door, telling him he can't sell this. He says, “It's just medicine. Try it.” They tried it and were like, “There's no way that anybody's going to drink this recreationally,” and then they left, and Carl was able to continue selling Malört.

The story continues when the brand fell into the hands of a man named George Brode. George really brought Malört up in Chicago. He bought the original recipe from Carl Jeppson and started the Carl Jeppson Company. He was also one of the first to create advertisements for Malört. He saw Malört as a challenge in a way, which you'll notice in Chicago – people like to prank their friends and try to challenge you to drink it if you're brave enough. So, some of his advertisements follow themes of, ‘Are you man enough?’, ‘Are you brave enough?’, ‘Are you tough enough?’

When George passed away, the Malört brand was left to his secretary, Pat Gabelick. She was selling out of her apartment for a very long time, and she outsourced production to Florida for a while, until Tremaine Atkinson, our current CEO, bought the brand from Pat and brought Malört back to Chicago. He thought it was extremely important to bring Malört back to its Chicago roots. He saw Malört as this diamond in the rough, and he understood that Malört’s flavour isn't so much a liability as it is an opportunity. When he bought the brand, Malört was sold in four states in 2018, with sales outside of Illinois around 6%. Fast forward to now: we're in 32 states and growing, and sales outside of Illinois total 37%.

And how would you describe Malört to those who’ve never had the pleasure?

There are a lot of ways people describe it. One that's commonly said is that Malört tastes like drinking gasoline out of a shoe. Or that it tastes like the Chicago River — and you don't want to go in there.

But I think it tastes like biting into a grapefruit that's only the peel — just very bitter, but also a little floral in a way. It's not bad at first, and it smells like almost nothing, but there's a lingering aftertaste that's there for maybe five minutes. And that's what really gets people. You'll see people be like, ‘Oh,’ and then, ‘Oh, disgusting.’

Weirdly, Malört sort of creates community. I encourage you guys to go out to a bar and order a shot of Malört. People around you will immediately start telling you the story of their first Malört shot and the crazy night they had. The bartender is going to look at you like you just said something terrible and question your sanity. If you go to a bar and you get a shot of vodka or a shot of tequila, it's almost something that you want to get over with quickly — you forget about it. But with Malört, I would be shocked if anybody's forgotten their first shot of it. And I'd be shocked if anybody hadn't made some sort of connection or friend with the people around them who've tried it too. So, it's really special in that way.

There's a mystique around Malört that creates a curiosity for it. When we market ourselves, we never give a real description of what it tastes like. I think when someone says something tastes “like drinking blended dog food out of a shoe,” you're so interested in what would make somebody say that, that it makes you want to try it.

Another reason why it’s so big in Chicago is because it is a rite of passage — you visit and you have to take a shot of Malört. Or else: did you really come to Chicago? And I think with that sort of tradition, there's a domino effect that happens: somebody offers you a shot, you try it, you have a whole night about it and then, next time you're at a bar, you're like, ‘I need someone else to experience a shot of Malört.’ And they do the same. So, it all piles onto each other — people either want to prank their friends or they love it. There's a genuine curiosity and a playfulness, and that makes people want to keep trying something that's known to be objectively disgusting.

Some people would say it’s risky to lean into the fact that your flavour profile is something many people are actually repulsed by. How and why did you do that as a brand?

In a way, we were lucky enough to have this be ingrained into who we are — from those first ads that were a little tongue-in-cheek back in the mid- to late-1900s, and then, while Pat Gabelick owned the brand, from a man named Sam Mechling. He did stand-up comedy in his free time and, during sets, would give people shots of Malört and ask them to write down what they thought it tasted like. And that's where some of those slogans that we still use now come from — like ‘Tonight's the night you fight your dad,’ or ‘These pants aren’t going to shit themselves,’ or ‘Kick your mouth in the balls.’ He helped give way to this humorous, edgy, self-deprecating marketing style that we use now.

And it makes sense that the marketing happened this way. We’ve never tried to convince people to like Malört. Because the responses that we get from people are all sort of the same. It's never, ‘Wow, what a delicious spirit.’ Or ‘I want to put this in a cocktail.’ It's a visual, visceral reaction — a shock reaction. So, we put that experience into our marketing. If there's a liquor brand putting up a poster, it's usually some beautiful shot of a bottle. Our posters have the word ‘balls’ on them. People are surprised when they see this, and then curious to learn more.

For us, marketing it in this way isn't risky. If we marketed ourselves in a more conventional style, that would be risky for us.

As many brands grow, they sometimes lose what makes them distinctive. How does Malört maintain its distinctiveness as it grows?

Something that's very important for us is that Malört stays Malört. The recipe will always be the same — we'll never change it to be anything different. And I think that also feeds into why we are who we are now. In life in general, an important piece of advice is to “just be yourself.” Issues arise when you try and be something that you're not. That’s why this is working so well for us — we know what people say about us, and we know who we are, and we're so okay with that. We love our quirks and celebrate all opinions.

That's what we really want to do: get people to stay curious about us. And that falls in line with how people talk about us: people will say, ‘It tastes like pencil shavings dipped in gasoline.’ — I've never tried that, but I want to know what it tastes like.

Can you tell us about how you came up with some of your most memorable recent advertising campaigns?

The first big thing that I did at the company was the opportunity to advertise on the side of a truck. It was a pretty big deal for us, because we hadn't yet done any out-of-home advertising except for the occasional poster. Tremaine and I sat down for, honestly, about six months, trying to figure out what we could do that would capture people's attention. We ended up with the idea of highlighting the ‘Malört face’ that's such a big part of taking a shot of Malört. That face and your opinion of what it tastes like – that's the Malört experience. And then we created a tagline out of “Please Enjoy Responsibly” and changed it to “Do Not Enjoy. Responsibly.” to fit our branding.

We used one of our employees as a model — her name is Bunny and she's been with the company for years. Anybody that you see on those ads, they're people that work for the company. We’re pretty scrappy, but the campaign was a huge success.

Last year was an election year for us, and we came out with our ‘I Malörted’ campaign. We created a fake campaign video, which was basically encouraging people to “do their civic duty and Malört today.” And then we did on-premise programming where we created posters and ‘I Malörted’ stickers that looked like the I Voted stickers and gave these to a bunch of accounts that wanted to participate. Every time you would take a shot of Malört at the bar, you would get your I Malörted sticker. This was a great tool for social media — we saw a lot of photos and videos, including one bald guy’s head just covered in I Malörted stickers.

What makes Malört so quintessentially Chicago?

There's a grit that you need to have when living here, and there's a grit about Malört that really goes hand in hand. It’s in the way that people carry themselves here — people are so passionate about their city and persevere through some tough weather to stay in a city that is so wonderful. You just do your thing here and that's great. And I think with Malört, say what you want, we don't care — we're just going to be us.

And also: it’s been in Chicago for so long — starting back in the 1920s — and then in George's hands, and then Pat was still running it out of her apartment, even though it was outsourced in Florida. It's the iconic liquor that comes out of the city, our little not-so-secret secret.

Is it hard to convince distributors to start carrying Malört?

Yes and no. I think once you try the shot, you understand. But if you’ve never heard anything about it, our marketing and uniqueness are what convince people. We typically provide accounts that sell Malört with posters, shelf-talkers, table tents. If you're at a liquor store, you'll see a bunch of advertisements for brands the store carries. You'll see a beautiful beach and a bottle of Corona, but then, right next to it, you'll see a poster that says ‘Tonight's the night you fight your dad’ with a bottle of Malört. Then you're like, ‘What did I just read? What is that?’ It makes you ask questions, get curious, and encourages people to buy it and be a part of the fun.

What’s next for Malört?

Our main goal is to grow like crazy. But, ultimately, what we want people to do is just try it. Give it a go and, if you don't like it, that's totally okay. I have a hunch you'll probably be drinking it again in the future though — Malört has a weird way of finding its way back to you.

“Like drinking blended dog food out of a shoe”: Anna Sokratov, Head of Marketing at Jeppson’s Malört