Why Alan Cumming and Campari want you to ‘stay bitter’ for Negroni Week

The Negroni and The Traitors share delicious bitterness. For the classic cocktail, that bite comes from the Italian liqueur Campari, while on the hit reality competition show, the sting comes from contestants who are banished from a Scottish castle and eliminated from the game.

This week, Campari is mixing the two in a timely social and digital marketing campaign called “Stay Bitter” that will feature The Traitors host Alan Cumming. The content will run across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Both are riding high, with The Traitors notching seven wins at the Emmy Awards last week and earning a three-season renewal from the show’s network, Peacock.

Campari, meanwhile, is kicking off Negroni Week, which runs September 21-27, a 14-year-old tradition initially conceptualized by Imbibe Magazine to celebrate the classic cocktail at thousands of restaurants and bars. Served over ice with an orange peel garnish, the Negroni is made with equal parts of three ingredients: gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. 

“Alan is having a moment; the timing is great,” Allison Varone, head of marketing at Campari America, tells Fast Company.

Cumming has won six Emmy Awards for The Traitors, three apiece for outstanding reality competition program and his role as the show’s host.

“Stay Bitter” features Cumming alongside eight other creative personalities, a nostalgic nod to a print advertisement that Campari originally ran in 1978 that boasted that “9 out of 10,000” Americans preferred a Campari mixed with club soda.

More recently, Campari has aimed higher.

Campari, along with its sister brand Aperol and other bitter aperitif alcoholic drinks, have been a hit with drinkers; these low-alcohol brands are perfect for mixing in cocktails for daytime drinking, which has become more popular with Gen Z and millennial drinkers who have eschewed late-night clubbing.

That growth also led to more intense competition, mostly from St-Germain elderflower liqueur, which is owned by Bacardi and has featured actress Sophie Turner in creative campaigns for three years.

“They want something that’s tasty, interesting, and colorful,” Varone says, addressing why younger drinkers are gravitating to aperitifs.

Campari reports that the brand sold about 246,000 nine-liter cases in the U.S. last year, up 1.8% from the prior year and outperforming the total industry’s 4% decline in volume.

Over the years, Campari’s creative output during events like Negroni Week has tended to focus on the hospitality sector, helping nurture the Negroni’s position as the most popular classic cocktail sold at the world’s best bars for five consecutive years, according to Drinks International magazine.

More recently, though, Varone says Campari has prioritized consumer-focused campaigns, working with Cumming for this campaign and last year with actress Sarah Michelle Gellar as a prominent figure in the creative.

“Bartenders know Campari, they know Negroni, and they know Campari is a key ingredient in cocktails,” says Varone. Campari, she adds, is “becoming much more widely understood in the consumer world.”

The Italian liquor company’s aperitif portfolio also includes Aperol, the nonalcoholic Crodino, and more recently, Sarti, a new brand that recently debuted in the U.S. and features blood orange, passion fruit, and mango flavors.

Varone says the portfolio gives drinkers different options. Campari and the Negroni are the most bitter, while the Aperol Spritz is easier to sip and more approachable, and Sarti is more fruity.

The deep orange-red of the Negroni, Aperol’s orange hue, and Sarti’s pink coloring all shine on social platforms like Instagram, and that gives Campari an edge, according to Spiros Malandrakis, the global insights manager of alcoholic drinks for Euromonitor, a global market research firm.

“More people drink alcohol with their eyes, not with their palates,” Malandrakis tells Fast Company.

The bright color of Campari can help offset any apprehension about its especially bitter flavor. “Many of the same Americans go to Starbucks for an overly sugary coffee for the day; they can still go to the bar and have a Negroni,” Malandrakis says.

And yet, not all of Campari’s brands have been growing at the same pace.

From 2020 through 2025, Aperol’s U.S. market share in the bitters category grew from 11% to 30.8%, but Campari’s position increased only from 8.6% to 12.6% over the same period, according to Euromonitor.

Campari, Varone acknowledges, is a drink that some consumers have to “graduate” to before they learn to enjoy a Negroni.

She says the brand’s market research shows that Americans who have spent time in Europe tend to be more amenable. An expanded lineup with Sarti and Crodino, which debuted in the U.S. in 2025, helps Campari pitch to a broader range of drinkers.

“We have a spritz lineup for different taste profiles, and Campari and the idea of bitterness is much more a part of people’s repertoire than it was years ago,” says Varone.

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