Bota Box Football Campaign Drives $1M Display Sales, 11% Lift
Bota Box's football marketing push drove $1M in display sales in four pre-Super Bowl weeks. The brand's display sales rose 11% in Sept-Oct, with 22,000 stores carrying the campaign.
Boxed wine brand Bota Box attributed $1 million in display sales to its football marketing push in the four weeks before the Super Bowl, compared with the same period a year earlier, Mary Wachowicz, brand portfolio director, said in an interview.
The "Wing It With Bota" campaign, now in its second year, targets football fans who traditionally reach for beer or spirits. "Our ethos is come as you are, and football is a perfect platform to introduce wine in somewhat of a non-traditional space," Wachowicz said.
The brand expanded the effort this year to include a 13-stop Tailgate Tour at college football games through November, reaching an audience of more than 1.5 million consumers. Sampling is central to the strategy. Last year, Bota distributed 16,000 samples: 6,000 at the National Buffalo Wing Festival and 10,000 at Guy Fieri's Flavortown Tailgate, which drew 11,500 attendees.
Display sales rose 11% in September and October compared with the prior two months, Wachowicz said. During that period, 22,000 U.S. stores, about 40% of the outlets that carry Bota Box, had the brand on display, including end caps, floor stacks, or checkout positions. The brand works with distributors to merchandise the product.
A recipe contest asking consumers to create an original chicken wing recipe and pair it with a Bota Box wine drew more than 100 entries in 2025. Three finalists competed at Flavortown, and the winner received Super Bowl tickets. For the 2026-2027 season, the contest runs again, with the winner announced at Flavortown Tailgate in Los Angeles on Feb. 14, 2027.
"We love the connection to wings because wings can be elevated; they can be whatever you want them to be," Wachowicz said. "Depending on the flavors, the sauces, the rubs, they pair well with our Bota Box lines."
The primary goal of the campaign is brand awareness, which currently sits around 67%. "Our No. 1 goal is to drive brand awareness completely, either through retail activation or these sampling consumer experiential opportunities," she said.
Bota's current consumer base skews older millennials and Gen X. The Tailgate Tour offers a much larger audience than other event activations, such as its sponsorship of the Professional Pickleball Association. "We were very pleased last year as the first year of Wing It With Bota," Wachowicz said. "It helped solidify the fact that we wanted to invest more by going to these larger events."
Sampling helps overcome stigma around boxed wine. "As you can imagine, box wine, there's still some stigma around drinking wine out of the box, and we know that when people taste Bota Box, they'll taste our quality," she said. "We have an extremely loyal consumer, and so we want people to taste it and taste Bota."
The campaign includes in-store displays with coupons for Flavortown Sauces, plus cards and box stickers. "Having this platform helps drive a differentiation amongst all the other wines out there," Wachowicz said.
Bota Box's display sales increased 11% in September and October, compared with the prior two months.
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