Sweet&Chilli marks 21 years with incubator programme

Experiential marketing agency Sweet&Chilli celebrated its 21st year in business in 2024. We spoke to the founders to learn how they grew it from a side hustle to a global business, and what they’re doing to celebrate the milestone.

Specialising in drinks strategy, trade advocacy and brand experience, Sweet&Chilli was founded by Allan Gage in 2003, inspired by his love of great hospitality. Living in Sydney, Australia, at the time, he was motivated to move back to London to work in one of the “coolest” bars in the city, Grand Central in Shoreditch.

“That’s where I first met Emma [Hutchison, Sweet&Chilli executive creative director and co-owner] behind the bar,” Gage says. “We worked together at Grand Central, and my entrepreneurial itch started a few years after working there when I met the culture team of Red Bull – they kind of wrote the rule book on impactful drinks marketing. They needed some pop-up bartenders to run their bar at London Fashion Week, which they sponsored. So I pulled together a small team of bartenders from my friendship circle and we got to work at a few of the London Fashion Weeks from 2003 onwards, which was amazing. And it was quickly after doing that that I thought, right, there’s a business here.”

Gage says he realised there “didn’t seem to really be anyone doing this”, explaining that at events, the focus tended to be placed upon food offerings rather than drinks. This inspired him to “do something with cocktails at events” and led him to begin building relationships with brands based on this offering.

“Bacardi was a was a brand that I knew some of the management team through Grand Central, and they were doing a festival project called B Live, which has now was morphed into Casa Bacardi,” Gage explains.

“Twenty-one years later, we’re still doing the bars for Bacardi UK festivals, and we’re talking tens of thousands of Mojitos in a weekend, seriously high volume. And obviously the brand is really conscious of high quality, really great drinks, so delivering that level of quantity at that level of quality was something that we’ve been doing for a very, very long time. So I guess the foundations were laid for hospitality being the root of what Sweet&Chilli was all about.”

It was 2005 when Gage persuaded Hutchison to join the team full time, which he says brought “a whole new dimension” to the business, thanks to her “design talents and strategic mindset”.

Together they also own and run London bars Nine Lives in London Bridge, and The Gunmakers in Farringdon.

This, he says, it what makes Sweet&Chilli so unique: “It’s that really powerful combination of hospitality and design expertise, and it’s what gave birth to a very distinctive way that we actually approach our work as an agency and in the venues that we own and operate as well.”

Hutchison explains: “When I joined Sweet&Chilli officially with Allan, my ethos was really about bringing together a team of talented design and drinks experts, so that we could really create an amazing and authentic offering for our drinks brand clients that was really born out of this idea of coming from behind the bar.”

Despite starting out in the events space, Hutchison says they quickly realised there was an opportunity to create incredible experiential marketing campaigns for their brand clients. “Over the last 21 years, we’ve seen that grow and grow. So now, the sort of services that we provide run from full creative campaigns to drink strategy, trade advocacy, brand experience and events – which we love and is very much at the core of what we do – but I think what I’m really proud of is the team that we’ve built, and how we have this really unique fusion of people who are super passionate about hospitality and experts in their craft, mixed with this amazing team of creatives, designers, strategists and marketeers. I think it’s that unique blend that sets us apart, really, from more traditional marketing agencies.”

Global mindset

While Sweet&Chilli began life as a London-based agency, due to the nature of hospitality being “such an international community”, Gage says they already had a “global mindset”, and it wasn’t long before the agency expanded to open international studios.

“We’ve now got six studios around the world. It’s all kind of stemmed from people that we’ve met along the way who are super passionate and share that same ethos that we have. So we’ve now got this worldwide reach that enables us to really tap into the beauty of the local and global cocktail community. And that’s the thing that we really try and bring to the work that we do for our clients.”

Sweet&Chilli’s Sydney office, which opened in 2011, is run by Cam Northway, one of the original bartenders for Sweet&Chilli when the agency launched, and the co-owner (alongside Sweet&Chilli) of bar Rocker in Bondi.

Meanwhile Shae Mutu and Eduardo Di Natale, both bartenders from “the original Bacardi days” run the US and Latin American studios respectively.

The newest outpost, located in Paris, was opened by Diageo World Class 2014 global finalist Mido Ahmed Yahi, who owns Cafe Moderne in the French capital, this year.

“These are 20-year relationships that I’m so, so proud of,” Gage says. “These are relationships that transcend work – they’re very much very deep friendships, and I’m really proud to have that family sitting at the director level of our global business.”

Having these global studios allows the agency to tap into the international drinks industry and keep abreast of the global trends, which in turn allows the team to create a tailored approach for its clients. Hutchison explains: “When we’re working with our clients, whether we’re coming up with a global campaign or a global strategy, we’ll always tailor it to the local market because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.”

“From our perspective,” she continues, “because we have this footprint that spans the world with our six studios, and also the wider network of people that we have within the industry that we’ll tap into for insight, it’s really about understanding what works at a local level, looking at what the global drivers are from a trends perspective.”

Gage adds: “It’s such a fabulous global community, the world of hospitality, especially in the world of cocktail culture. But it’s a real family.”

Putting drinks ‘at the centre’

With this global yet local mindset at play, Sweet&Chilli approaches all projects and briefs with its clients by first identifying the challenge each brand is trying to solve.

Hutchison offers Johnnie Walker as an example of one case study that exemplifies this approach: “We did some amazing work with Johnnie Walker, which started off a couple of years ago. They were looking to recruit 12 million new consumers who didn’t like whisky, and they wanted to convert them into whisky lovers.” Whisky, she notes, traditionally had quite a masculine perception around it, however, she says Johnnie Walker has always been “a really progressive brand” who really wanted to “flip the narrative and reposition their whisky to appeal to a whole new demographic of people who maybe had not really felt like they resonated with the cues that were coming out of the marketing campaigns from other whisky brands.

“So we worked with them to kind of really identify what is the story? What are the barriers that are stopping people from trying whisky? And the campaign that we came up with was around the Highball, and it was around shifting the mindset of people that think whisky just had to be drunk neat by showcasing the versatility of the liquid, and putting it into a space where people feel a little bit more familiar. It really enabled us to open up that brand to a whole new audience.”

“One thing we’ll always be huge advocates of is putting the drink right at the heart of whatever the campaign is that we design,” Gage explains. “It sounds odd, but drinks brands often don’t focus on the drink itself.” Instead, he says, they focus on the moment of purchase, rather than the moments when the consumer actually gets to taste it. As a result, “this incredible liquid is often lost. You know, it’s often the more lifestyle cues that are focused on, versus the actual liquid itself. And I think that is something that Sweet&Chilli has always been huge advocates of, to bring that drink right to the centre of the campaign. Ultimately, you can build all the layers of production. Something can sound good with the amazing sound system, the lighting rig, the tent, everything can be incredible, and then it can all fall down at the last second because the drink is wrong.

“And so,” he says, “Sweet&Chilli starts at that point of incredible drinks, with incredible service, by incredible bartenders, and then you start building the layers in the right direction, instead of the other way around. You can do more harm than good with a marketing campaign that doesn’t focus on the drink. If people get to the point of actually trying it and it doesn’t resonate, or it doesn’t taste good, or for whatever reason it’s not their thing, they’re not coming back.”

Spark Lab incubator programme

With 21 years of experience running successful marketing campaigns and activations within the drinks industry, Sweet&Chilli is now marking the milestone with the launch of an incubator programme, called Spark Lab.

Gage explains: “Hospitality is a breeding ground for amazing ideas, and what the Spark Lab is all about is trying to offer the support to turn an idea into a reality.

“We’re fortunate enough to have this wonderful team behind us, and what we’re going to do is offer a workshop lab to individuals or brands who are at that startup or challenger phase in their in their business and could really do with the expertise that we proudly offer the world’s biggest drinks brands.”

Set to launch in January 2025, the initial workshop will be offered free of charge in a competition format. “We’re asking people to pitch their idea, and then we’ll choose one to support with £21,000 (US$26,788) worth of agency time. Of course, if we receive lots of applicants and they’re all amazing then who knows what we might do as a next step, but at present there is one workshop available. We want to do it annually as a Christmas gift to the industry.”

The competition is open to UK-based individuals and new-to-market brands (under two years old). The prize is a package of essential resources and expertise that will enable them to turn standout concepts into memorable, buzz-worthy experiences.

Hutchison clarifies: “We’re looking for individuals or brands to sign up to essentially win the opportunity for a hands-on incubator programme with Sweet&Chilli. The way that we’ll run that is dependent on what the idea is, but we’ll put together a team of our experts within the business and work with them over a short workshop – an intensive couple of days – to bring their idea off the page and into the real world.

“It’s something we’re super passionate about. It’s kind of a mini condensed version of what we do with some of our bigger brand clients. But we really wanted to give the opportunity to people who are entrepreneurs and are really excited about an idea that they have, or they’ve started a brand, and they need help in getting it to the next level. And as Allan said, obviously we’re really looking to support that entrepreneurial spirit – we’re really excited to be able to support the next stage in somebody’s journey, taking a side hustle from paper to the real world.”

Entry to the Spark Lab competition will be via a short pitch video. The top five applicants will then be interviewed by Sweet&Chilli before one winner is chosen to receive £21,000 worth of agency time.

Following the initial competition, the Sweet&Chilli Spark Lab will be built into a service offering, which will support clients with innovation work.

Applications will open from January 2025, and more information can be found at sweetandchilli.com/sparklab.

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