(01 / the lab)
four houses // one room // one contract
A room you can’t build.
Four former spirits brand ambassadors, sold as one unit. Two decades of house experience, a decade of production, and relationships that predate every brief you could write.
formerly affiliated. fully independent.
Each of us held the role inside one of the category's largest houses. None of us works for one now. Built for premium spirits, wine and luxury.
(02 / the problem)
Your brand is being built by strangers.
Strategy, content, trade and physical brand, scattered across vendors who have never met. The LAB puts all four in one room.
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.
(03 / the 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 went with them.
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. It lives in companies you can hire.
(04 / the operators)
Kyle Ford
rémy cointreau // collectif 1806
Creative Director, Ford Media Lab
former manager, Collectif 1806 · Rémy Cointreau · 2012–2016
Bartended in San Francisco and New York, then helped build Collectif 1806, Rémy Cointreau's bartender ambassador program, where his cocktail photos ended up on the brand's own feeds. Built Ford Media Lab from there. Director of photography on campaigns for Perrier-Jouët, Absolut and the houses. Self-taught.
Rachel Ford
diageo // tanqueray
Managing Partner, Ford Media Lab
former national brand ambassador · Tanqueray · Diageo · 2012–2016
Four years on the road as Tanqueray's national brand ambassador for Diageo, 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, and wrote both volumes of 1806 Magazine. She also manages Bartender at Large and Mover & Shaker Co., the other two businesses at this table. Runs every LAB engagement end to end.
Erick Castro
bartender at large
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
mover & shaker co.
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 268K+ social following, and a standing line direct to the people who sell your category every night.
268K+ followers
20M+ monthly views
1,200+ orders shipped monthly
(05 / the advantage)
A roster you hire. A unit you deploy.
You are hiring 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. Real capture, finished by hand, with no markup chain between the camera and the final file.
(03) trade & on-premise // Bartender at Large.
Erick Castro’s owned trade media with a standing audience. Sponsored episodes and pre-roll into the trade, brand-ambassador and distiller features, and the platform where a brand makes its technical case at length. Competition judging and bartender education, produced through his own venues and studio. On-site appearances are scoped separately, never assumed.
(04) reach & physical brand // Mover & Shaker Co.
Nick Hogan’s trade media in its own right: a 268K+ following and 20M+ monthly views, written in the trade’s own voice. Then the physical line: design, production, and distribution of merch and POS bartenders keep, 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.
(06 / the premise)
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.
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.
(07 / the engine)
Ford Media Lab is the engine.
Ford Media Lab runs The LAB. We scope the engagement, run the room and deliver the work, with one point of contact and one invoice.
FML has spent a decade building premium content and running campaigns for the houses that own the category: Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Suntory Global Spirits, Rémy Cointreau and Proximo, 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
(08 / how it works)
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.
(09 / engagement)
Four ways into the room.
(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. By application.
We take a limited number of engagements each cycle. Most brands start at the front door. Engagements begin at $34,000.
(10 / inquiry)
You can’t hire this anymore. You can book it.
Start with the briefing: half a day with all four of us on your brand.