Bring Your Own Courvoisier: Repositioning Cognac by Occasion

Courvoisier has been owned by Campari Group since 2024, when the Italian company completed its purchase of the cognac house from Suntory Global Spirits for about $1.2 billion, the largest acquisition in its history, according to The Spirits Business. In June 2025, Campari launched its first campaign for the brand: “Bring Your Own Courvoisier,” shortened to BYOCV, led by a 60-second film called “The Courvoisier Call,” directed by Mark Anthony Green and starring Karrueche Tran, with a series of informal early-evening “Dînatoire” events in US cities.

A year on, the picture is mixed in the way repositioning usually is. Courvoisier contributed €157 million in net sales to Campari in 2025, per the group’s full-year results. In early 2026, Campari’s own first-quarter release cited a weak cognac market in the US, and US tariffs continued to weigh on the brand. Yet when Campari began selling off smaller brands under its “fewer, bigger bets” strategy, including another cognac, Bisquit and Dubouché, it kept Courvoisier among its core brands. The campaign is a long bet in a hard market. The move behind it is worth understanding regardless of how the bet pays off.

The move: change the moment, not the product

Cognac’s traditional moment is the end of the evening. After dinner, in a heavy glass, slowly, often by someone older. The category’s codes follow from that: age statements, heritage, oak, candlelight, formality. Every cognac brand that leans on those codes competes for the same moment and the same image, the problem laid out in brand codes vs category codes.

BYOCV moves Courvoisier to the other end of the night. Campari’s line is that the pregame becomes the main event: getting ready with friends before going out. Campari America’s head of marketing, Allison Varone, framed the launch around that moment before the celebration, and the brand told The Spirits Business that the real fun is often getting ready with your friends.

The product is the same bottle. What changed is the situation in which Campari wants people to think of it. Marketing researchers call these situations category entry points: the occasions, needs and moments that prompt someone to think of a category at all. Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, whose work on category entry points popularized the idea, argues that brands grow by being linked to more of these moments in more buyers’ minds. A brand linked only to after dinner is available only after dinner.

Why this particular moment was a smart pick

Three things make the pregame a stronger choice than a new moment invented from scratch.

It already exists. People get ready together before nights out whether or not a cognac brand notices. The campaign doesn’t have to create a behavior, only attach itself to one. Invented rituals are expensive to build. Existing ones only need a brand that shows up in them consistently.

It borrows a phrase everyone already understands. “Bring your own” is a familiar social instruction. Putting the brand name inside it makes the line hard for a competitor to reuse, which is a small but real advantage. A generic celebration line could belong to any spirit. “Bring Your Own Courvoisier” can only belong to one.

And it fits a cultural association the brand already had. Courvoisier has long had a place in hip-hop and nightlife culture in the US, famously in the 2001 hit “Pass the Courvoisier,” well beyond cognac’s traditional after-dinner image. The pregame is closer to that association than the drawing room is. Repositioning works best when it moves a brand toward something people half-believe already, rather than away from everything they know.

Who carries the message matters as much as the message

Luxury spirits advertising often borrows the grammar of fragrance ads: slow motion, glamour, distance, a mood more than a moment. That grammar suits a nightcap. It doesn’t suit getting ready with friends, and a brand trying to change its occasion has to change its style of storytelling too, the contrast worth reading against decoding the tactics of perfume ads.

Campari chose a director from fashion and style media and talent whose audiences already live in the moment the brand wants: people whose feeds are full of getting ready, outfits and nights out. The campaign ran on social channels including TikTok and Instagram, according to Global Drinks Intel. That is the logic to copy. When you want to attach a brand to a new occasion, choose the people who already represent that occasion to their audience, rather than people chosen for follower counts alone. Selecting creators by the moments their audience lives, rather than by reach alone, is the core of influencer marketing matched to the occasion you want to own.

How to apply the move to your own brand

List the moments when people currently think of your category, and notice which ones your brand is linked to. Most brands own one or two, usually the same ones as their competitors.

Look for a moment that already exists, that your category could credibly serve, and that no competitor holds. Adjacent moments work better than distant ones: the start of the night rather than a different product use altogether.

Build a line and assets that only you can use, ideally with your name or a code of your own inside them, so the association lands on your brand and not on the category.

Show up in that moment with people who already belong there. And commit for years, because an association between a brand and a moment is built by repetition, not by a launch. Choosing which moments to claim and holding them consistently is the work of brand identity strategy built around the moments you want to own.

Judge it on the right measure. A weak US cognac market and tariffs will shape Courvoisier’s sales in any given year. The question for an occasion strategy is whether more people start to think of the brand in the new moment, and that takes longer than one campaign cycle to show. A brand is available only in the moments people link it to. Adding a moment is slow work, and it is the kind that compounds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who owns Courvoisier?

Courvoisier is owned by Campari Group, the Italian spirits company behind Aperol and Campari. Campari completed its acquisition of the cognac brand from Suntory Global Spirits in 2024 for about $1.2 billion, the largest deal in its history. In 2026, as Campari sold several smaller brands under its strategy of focusing on fewer, bigger brands, it kept Courvoisier among its core brands.

What is the Bring Your Own Courvoisier campaign?

Bring Your Own Courvoisier, or BYOCV, is Campari Group’s first campaign for Courvoisier, launched in June 2025. It repositions the cognac for the pregame, the time spent getting ready with friends before a night out. It included a 60-second film, “The Courvoisier Call,” directed by Mark Anthony Green and starring Karrueche Tran, informal Dînatoire events in US cities, social media content and retail activations.

Who is in the Bring Your Own Courvoisier commercial?

The campaign’s film, “The Courvoisier Call,” stars actor Karrueche Tran and was directed by Mark Anthony Green, whose background is in fashion and style media. The 60-second film ran on Courvoisier’s social channels, including TikTok and Instagram, as the centerpiece of the campaign, supported by events and retail activity in the US. Its casting leaned on style and nightlife credibility rather than reach alone.

How is Courvoisier performing under Campari?

Courvoisier contributed €157 million in net sales to Campari Group in 2025. In early 2026, Campari reported a weak cognac market in the US, with tariffs weighing on the brand, while Courvoisier continued to expand in Europe. Campari has kept it as a core brand while selling other, smaller brands, which suggests the group sees its repositioning as a long-term project.