Challenge

Santo is the additive-free tequila co-founded by Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar, a brand with more star power than most in the category. But celebrity cuts both ways: it wins attention and it invites a ceiling. “Celebrity tequila” is a label that sells the famous names short and the liquid even shorter.

On social, that ceiling showed. The feed didn’t match the quality in the bottle. Posting was sporadic, the look was inconsistent, and engagement sat near the low end of the category norm. Santo didn’t need to be more famous. It needed to be believed. The job was to turn a celebrity-backed account into a credible craft brand that the people who shape the category actually want to follow.

The Idea

Lead with the liquid, not the logo. PriceWeber built a credibility-first social strategy that makes the tequila and the people behind it the hero (additive-free, made by a master distiller at a historic distillery) and treats storytelling as the point, not the sell.

The plan optimized for the metric that signals real affinity, engagement rate, rather than a vanity number. And it put the content in front of the audiences that confer authority: premium spirits drinkers, trade gatekeepers, and the cocktail and mixology creators whose endorsement the category trusts.

The Work

PriceWeber became Santo’s social agency of record on April 1, 2026, and rebuilt the program end to end.

A six-pillar content engine gave every post a job: Liquid and Legitimacy (the craft case: additive-free, master distiller, historic distillery), Homeplace and Heritage, Cocktail Craft (recipe-led Reels and carousels), Founders and Fans, Bold Experiences, and Cultural Moments. Quality went up on every post, with sharper photography, cleaner design and a more premium feel, and cadence rose with it, from 74 to 118 feed posts across the two platforms.

Short-form video became the engine for new reach. Content was tied to real moments and real voices, including Sammy Hagar’s Las Vegas residency, Guy Fieri’s retail meet-and-greets, National Tequila Day, Coachella and Day of the Dead, so it felt earned rather than manufactured. A paid layer put the best content in front of the right people with geo-targeting and 21+ age-gating, rather than spending to chase followers. And daily community management kept Santo in the comments and DMs in the brand’s own voice.

The Results

In its first six months as agency of record, Santo’s social earned far more from the audiences it already had. Across Instagram and Facebook, impressions held essentially flat (up about 8%) while total engagements more than quadrupled, from 23,210 to 99,251, proof the gains came from better content, not a bigger ad buy. The gains came from better content, not a bigger audience.

Platform by platform

Instagram: the rebuild

Instagram saw the most dramatic rebuild. On only modestly more posting (36 posts to 57), engagements rose 442%, from 5,595 to 30,328. Engagement rate climbed from 0.3% to 1.7%, and short-form video views grew from 40,438 to 505,382, all on essentially flat reach (+8%). Net new follows more than quadrupled, even though followers were never the goal.

Facebook: the reactivation

Facebook was a different job: a large but passive audience, woken up. With only modestly more posting (38 posts to 61), engagements rose 291%, from 17,615 to 68,923, and engagement rate rose from 0.8% to 2.8%, the higher of the two platforms, on roughly the same 2.5M impressions the page was already reaching. Video views grew from 84,571 to 311,361. The reach was always there; the content finally earned a response.

Six months in, Santo’s feed reads the way the tequila tastes: serious, crafted, and worth paying attention to.