the lab
four houses // one room // one contract
formerly affiliated. fully independent.
A collective of four former brand ambassadors from the largest houses in the category, reassembled as one independent unit. Built for premium spirits, wine, and luxury.
Your brand is being built by strangers.
Strategy, content, and trade, scattered across vendors who have never met. The LAB is one industry-fluent unit that does all four.
The LAB is Ford Media Lab’s specialist engagement for spirits brands. Four operators who built the category’s most useful businesses, working as one unit on the problems an outside agency can’t reach.
(01 / the industry shift)
The role left the houses. The talent built past it.
The brand ambassador was where a brand’s strategy met its trade. They carried direction into the bars and carried the bar’s verdict back to the boardroom. It was the role that kept a brand honest in the only room that votes with its money.
That role left the houses first. The people who held it did not scatter into freelance. They took the fluency it gave them and built businesses on it: a production studio, a trade-media platform with a standing audience, a brand-and-merch company the trade buys from on its own. The expertise did not dilute. It compounded.
Now the same exodus is reaching brand strategy and direction. As the houses streamline, the people who held the category in their heads are leaving the building, and the brands still need what they did. The difference is where that expertise lives now. Not on a payroll. In companies you can hire.
(02 / the premise)
This is not a reunion.
Four people who came up through the largest houses in the category, then left and built something on the way out. A visual production studio. A trade-media platform with its own audience. A brand-and-merch company the trade actually buys from. And the strategist who architects across all of it.
Apart, each is a real business a brand already pays for. Together, they are something the category has never been able to buy: one industry-fluent unit that sets strategy, builds the work, and moves the trade as a single team, under one contract.
This is not the ambassador role rehired. It is a company that, until now, did not exist. Four houses. One room. One contract.
(03 / the unfair advantage)
A roster you hire. A unit you deploy.
Anyone can assemble freelancers. No one else can sell four operators who already know your category from the inside, each running a business built on it, arriving as one accountable team.
Most engagements fragment. Strategy goes to one agency, production to another, social to a third, and trade to no one who has worked behind a bar. Intent erodes at every handoff. The LAB closes the loop. Four pillars, one unit, end to end.
(01) strategy & social — Ford Media Lab. Brand architecture and commercial strategy, built from inside a legacy portfolio. Content strategy, social media management, and community across your channels. The direction, set by someone who has held it at a house.
(02) production & content — Ford Media Lab. The studio and the Visual Intelligence pipeline. Campaign visuals, product photography, and full brand-world building, produced at volume. Studio-to-server, no markup chains.
(03) trade & on-premise — Bartender at Large. Erick Castro’s standing audience and the credibility the trade already trusts. Sponsored episodes and trade media, brand-ambassador and distiller features, bartender education run out of his own bars, and cocktail-competition hosting and judging.
(04) reach & physical brand — Mover & Shaker Co. Nick Hogan’s design-and-production line for the things the trade actually wants. Branded merch and POS that bartenders keep, sponsored social to a 250K following, and the Mover & Shaker calendar that hangs in back offices across the country, with brand-sponsored months and days.
Hire one pillar or the whole unit. The engagement scales from a single strategic audit to full execution across strategy, content, trade, and physical brand, scoped to your brand and run as one team. It is the work you would otherwise source from four vendors who have never met, delivered by four who already work together.
(04 / the collective)
Four operators. Four businesses. One unit.
Rachel Ford
Managing Partner, Ford Media Lab
former national brand ambassador · Tanqueray · Diageo · 2012–2016
Came up as a national brand ambassador for Tanqueray, then built the strategy and social practice inside Ford Media Lab. Has run brand architecture and community for Plymouth Gin, Redbreast, Chivas, Beefeater, Kenwood, Amaro Montenegro, and Giffard. Runs every LAB engagement end to end.
Kyle Ford
Creative Director, Ford Media Lab
former manager, Collectif 1806 · Rémy Cointreau · 2012–2016
Came up managing Collectif 1806 for Rémy Cointreau, then built Ford Media Lab’s Miami studio and its Visual Intelligence pipeline. Director of photography on campaigns for Perrier-Jouët, Absolut, and the houses. Self-taught, and the reason the work gets made.
Erick Castro
Media Personality, Bartender at Large
former brand ambassador, English Gins · Pernod Ricard · 2010–2012
One of the most recognized bartenders in the country. Host of Bartender at Large, co-owner of Raised by Wolves, founder of Polite Provisions, and a name on Bar World 100’s most influential list. The credibility the trade extends to almost no one, built over two decades behind the bar.
40K
monthly listeners
93K+
followers
2×
Spirited Award winner
Nick Hogan
Founder, Mover & Shaker Co.
former brand representative, Angel’s Envy · Bacardi · 2017–2024
Built Mover & Shaker Co. into a brand the trade follows, wears, and pours with. Design and production for merch and POS bartenders actually keep, a 250K social following, and a standing line direct to the people who sell your category every night.
250K
followers
20M+
monthly views
1,200+
orders shipped monthly
(05 / the engine)
Ford Media Lab is the engine.
The LAB is not four freelancers with a shared logo. It is run by Ford Media Lab, the studio that scopes the engagement, runs the room, and delivers the work. One point of contact. One invoice. One accountable studio behind all four operators.
FML has spent a decade building premium content and running campaigns for the houses that own the category: Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Rémy Cointreau, Proximo, Suntory, and for brands from Perrier-Jouët and Absolut to Giffard. The room advises. The engine builds whatever the room recommends.
The track record is extensive and documented. See the full body of work in our
(06 / how it works)
One brief. Four disciplines. Zero handoffs.
You brief once. The collective works your brand from four directions at the same time, in the same room, and returns one integrated direction. No recruiting four vendors, no vetting, no coordinating four contracts, no managing the seams between them. They already work as a unit.
Everything routes through one point of contact at Ford Media Lab, from first scoping conversation to final delivery. One relationship. One invoice. Four disciplines that never hand off.
(07 / the engagements)
Four ways into the room.
We take a limited number of engagements each cycle. Most brands start at the front door.
(01) the briefing — the front door Half a day with the full collective, your brand at the center. All four operators review your brand and category in advance, then work it live, together. You leave with a clear, integrated direction, not a proposal to evaluate. It is the fastest way to put the entire room on your brand, and the natural entry point to everything else. Most engagements start here.
(02) the council — the room on call A standing quarterly retainer across all four operators, with reserved priority access. The collective stays current on your brand and is available for counsel as decisions come up, a strategic board of four category insiders on call. For brands that want the room’s thinking continuously, not just once.
(03) the deployment — the build Full-collective execution, scoped to your brief. Social and content from the studio, trade activation and education from the bar, merch and physical brand from Mover & Shaker, run as one campaign, not four workstreams. This is the LAB as your category team: strategy set, work built, trade moved, all under one contract and one point of contact. The method is fixed and the disciplines are proven; the brief is bespoke to your brand. For brands replacing a fragmented agency roster with a single fluent unit.
(04) the ambassador audit — the flagship A four-to-six-week embed across all four disciplines. Each operator audits their lane, trade positioning, on-premise, content and editorial, physical brand equity, and the collective converges on one integrated report. One document, four signatures on the cover. The engagement only we can sell. By application.
(08 / the close)
You can’t hire this anymore. You can book it.
Half a day. Four operators. One direction for your brand.
Start with the briefing below.
book the briefing →
(09 / the inquiry)
Start the conversation.
Tell us about your brand. Rachel will follow up to scope the right engagement.
For campaign visuals, product photography, or ongoing content — that’s Ford Media Lab.
To book Bartender at Large or Mover & Shaker Co., reach us at