With help from FaZe Clan, the legend of Four Loko is reaching Gen Z

If you’re a Millennial who attended college in the late 2000s, there’s a good chance you can tell a story involving Four Loko. In its original formulation, the canned drink’s mix of alcohol and stimulants produced wild nights and widespread health concerns.

A more docile version of Four Loko hit shelves in 2010, and the brand has stayed relevant over the past decade. These days, however, Four Loko parent company Phusion Projects is confronting a generational question: How do you sell a brand built on Millennial nostalgia when Millennials are growing up and not drinking as many flavored malt beverages as they did in their younger years?

The solution, as you might expect, involves marketing aimed at Gen Z. Four Loko’s legacy was built on brashness and defiant behavior, so Phusion Projects is teaming up with influencers who embody those characteristics. It inked a partnership with FaZe Clan as part of its rollout for a new Four Loko flavor called CAMO.

With CAMO, Phusion Projects is looking to build on the momentum its best-known product has generated in recent years. A press release notes that Four Loko has launched the top-selling new flavored malt beverage single-serve items in the U.S. for three consecutive years.

The plan to continue that winning streak involves a direct reference to the design that has remained constant on Four Loko cans since the brand’s caffeinated days. Camouflage prints also show up in many of the games that FaZe Clan streamers play — and group members like Stable Ronaldo, FaZe Banks, Adept, and Lacy celebrated the partnership with a stylized photoshoot.

The partnership between Four Loko and FaZe Clan is not just about a specific color scheme. Even after the changes to Four Loko’s formula, its drinks have been marketed to consumers who want to push their limits. The brand’s entry into the hard seltzer market, for example, was advertised as a high-ABV option

compared to industry leaders like White Claw. FaZe Clan leaders like FaZe Banks (who has led the company since its acquisition by GameSquare) display their own brands of edgy behavior.

“FaZe Clan is internet culture. We create unfiltered, boundary-pushing content that truly connects with our community and Four Loko gets that,” said FaZe Clan SVP of Content and Business Development Spencer Sherman in a statement. “They’re not trying to play it safe or asking us to play it safe, they embrace out-of-the-box ideas which makes this such a great fit for both brands and our audiences.”

The FaZe Clan collab is part of a broader push that is leading Phusion Projects to spend “more than we ever hand on the [Four Loko] brand,” as its Global CMO Samantha Catalina told Modern Retail. “We love to push buttons by doing things that are culturally relevant while having fun,” she said.

There’s only one question left about this co-op venture: Will it translate to sales? A press release from FaZe Clan notes that the company’s roster has collectively added 20 million followers across all social channels in the past year. That’s a lot of potential customers for Four Loko — so long as FaZe’s fans are eager to embrace a risk-taking attitude.