For the 14th consecutive year, Campari is anchoring its biggest annual marketing moment to Negroni Week — September 21–27, 2026 — and this year the brand is leaning harder into cultural credibility than traditional paid media. The centerpiece is The Bitter Nine, a curated ensemble of nine creative personalities spanning entertainment, fashion, photography, and hospitality, led by actor and producer Alan Cumming. The campaign extends the brand's multi-year "Stay Bitter" platform, itself modeled on a 1970s Campari advertisement celebrating those who embrace a minority taste.
For bar operators, the practical read is straightforward: Campari is doing significant consumer-demand generation work on your behalf during one of the strongest cocktail-sales windows of the year. According to Drinks International's 2025 data, the Negroni ranks as the world's number-one best-selling classic cocktail in the world's best bars — a position that translates directly into menu performance for venues that merchandise it well. Campari is backing that demand with a direct consumer rebate of up to $15 on Campari Negroni purchases in select U.S. markets, which functions as a trial-driving mechanic that should move volume at the venue level.
The Partnership Stack
Campari is again co-presenting Negroni Week with Imbibe, the drinks trade publication and events platform, and continuing its giving partnership with Slow Food. In 2025, more than 15,000 bars and restaurants across 97 countries participated in the week, collectively raising more than $700,000 for the Slow Food Negroni Week Fund. That fund channels money into education scholarships, innovation awards, and grants for hospitality professionals — making participation a reputational asset for operators who want visible community ties. For 2026, Slow Food grants will also support Negroni Week Innovation Awards and Slow Food Exchanges.
The Imbibe partnership is particularly worth noting for operators who are thinking about media exposure. Imbibe's multi-platform footprint — print, digital, newsletter, podcast, and events — means that bars and restaurants registered for Negroni Week gain proximity to editorial coverage and audience reach that a standalone promotion cannot buy. That's the functional value of attaching your venue to a well-structured supplier campaign: borrowed media weight. Operators interested in how supplier-funded programs can reduce their own brand launch costs should pay attention to the mechanics here.
What Operators Should Do Now
Campari's influencer architecture is a useful template for spirits-forward bars considering their own programming strategy. The Bitter Nine model — diverse cultural figures with genuine product affinity rather than transactional endorsement — reflects a broader shift in how premium spirits brands are allocating activation budgets away from pure reach metrics toward credibility signals. That matters for operators because it shapes guest expectations: consumers arriving during Negroni Week are primed by content, not just advertising.
Venues not yet registered for Negroni Week should visit NegroniWeek.com to confirm participation eligibility and access co-branded assets. The consumer rebate program, available in markets where valid, creates a low-friction trial mechanism that operators can reference in their own social and email channels — essentially extending Campari's media spend without additional venue investment. For operators thinking about how to align their growth marketing calendar with supplier activations, Negroni Week remains one of the cleaner off-premise-to-on-premise conversion opportunities in the spirits calendar.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
