Maddie Largey on LinkedIn: Pleased to announce the “official debut” of Jinx Drinx into the press… | 17 comments (2024)

Notable news regarding California’s new law requiring date-rape testing kits at bars (via LA Times).As of this summer, California will require all bars and nightclubs serving alcoholic beverages to offer kits for testing various forms of date-rape drugs.We see this as a notable step in the right direction for ensuring that this extremely important topic remains top of mind. Mandatory signage now attached to establishments keeping their liquor licenses will read, “Don’t get roofied! Drink-spiking drug test kits are available here. Ask a staff member for details.” My initial reaction to this wording as someone close to this issue is that "Don't *get* roofied" to some degree feels like it places blame on those who have had this experience, whereas I'd suggest a more neutral phrase like "Check for roofies!" I've also seen helpful signage in bar bathrooms instructing to "ask the bartenders for (keyword) if you're in an uncomfortable situation," which could be critically useful alongside implementing the test kits, given how scary it could feel in the moment to ask for one.To read the full article, click the link in the comments below.

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“How did you find your co-founder?” – one of the top questions I’m asked about Jinx Drinx.I was introduced to Colin by one of my classmates while Jinx was still a Stanford capstone project. He’d worked previously creating one of AB InBev’s most successful internally-designed products (Black Crown Gin & Tonic in South Africa) – such an impressive feat.On our first FaceTime, what might have been a quick 15-minute chat became a two-hour deep dive into the anti-drink tampering mission and three-tier alcohol system politics. Three years later, Colin isn't just a cofounder, he’s also my:✦ Operations wizard✦ Bringer of stellar ~long-term optimistic, short-term realistic~ startup vibes✦ Genuine friend outside of JinxHe always takes the time to understand my view when we're making strategic designs & most importantly, he shares/receives feedback thoughtfully.(an underrated high IQ/EQ combo I’m grateful for every day).It’s trite to fully express the level of lucky I feel that I get to work with him – there’s no one I’d rather be building a company with.Cheers to celebrating the people who mean a lot to us, both professionally and personally.Extra cheers to Colin :)

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Here's how we met one of our new mega Jinx Drinx fans, Ellia.Ellia sampled the pouches at our popup event with Springy Jeans (the largest vintage IG account run by the actual best team ever). They built an entire fake city inside a warehouse space to showcase the clothes drop, including a “mini mart” for us to serve Jinx out of while aesthetic fans lined up around the block to come see the massive feat (see pics below).My go-to move at our Jinx Mini Mart (and generally) for engaging with people who linger to hear more about the brand is to also ask to take a pic of them with the pouches (in true Gen Z .5 zoom style).I’ve realized it feels 10x easier to ask for someone’s IG when you’re sending them a snapshot of the moment rather than schilling the transactional “Oh, and if you wanna follow us with this QR code, our store locator’s linked in the bio.”Ellia, sharing she was a fellow designer, let me shoot some coordinated pics of her double-fisting a lime Jinx & lime La Croix while wearing green pants — we tagged her, and she proceeded to put all her friends onto Jinx.She even bought 100 to bulk ship home to her friends in Georgia for their Labor Day lake reunion weekend, where they sent us an entire Google album of UGC content with the pouches saying we could use any of it.For every few people that leave our event sampling saying things like, “Wow, this is actually good — once you guys are in the {insert large chain} by me, I’ll buy it for sure” {sighs in small business}, there are the gems like Ellia who go out of their way to show they actually love Jinx. Fellow CPG/F&B – let me know if you’ve got other tips for connecting more meaningfully with people at your event activations!#foodandbeverage #consumerbehavior #entrepreneurship

“So why’d you guys choose the name Jinx?”^ One of the main questions we hear at events.We usually answer that from a marketing perspective, we loved that it rhymed with “drinks” and had so many fun potential plays around “Jinx you owe me a Jinx”But the full story of how the pouches got their name was a bit more involved ~When brainstorming, we knew that the name needed to successfully live within a verbal testing sentence: “Hey, can you pick up a pack of _____” If that didn’t sound natural to say out loud, it was a no-go.From there, we rank stacked our top options based on polling our target demo for three metrics: maturity, gender-neutrality & catchiness — where Jinx came out as the winner on all fronts. We decided to apply for our trademark as “Jinx Drinx” after scouring the public trademark searches and seeing availability for JINX as a wine product.This is where it got interesting — we learned the trademark office considers all applications for alcohol names under one umbrella (meaning they don’t separate wine/spirits/beer products). They came back to us with a claim that there was “potential for confusion” with a seasonal Jinx beer product released by a brewery in 2008. Slightly heartbroken at that point after really falling in love with the name, we reached out to the owner of the Jinx beer mark for months, hoping they’d consider signing a letter we could submit saying they didn’t believe the potential for confusion was there. It was one of the most heartwarming things when we heard back from a woman on their marketing team that we could hop on a call, and we explained the mission behind Jinx mitigating the risk of drink tampering. She said she loved what we were doing and that they were willing to sign a letter for us for free. Through her graciousness, Katharyn Kirkham’s expertise, and my childhood best friend Julie for the original name concept, we’ve now heard back from the USPTO that our trademark has been granted! Such an exciting win for our team and a testament to the power of so many women supporting us along the way.#foodandbeverage #startups #trademarks Jinx Drinx

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✧⬖ Jinx Drinx went on NBC!! ⬗✧As cool as it is to have our first coverage for a broader audience, I feel obligated to caveat the piece with some critical feedback.Going into the interview, we knew they’d ask us about Gen Z drinking trends and alcohol education on college campuses. One of the best research sources we’ve found thus far on these types of alc edu programs (linked below) shows that 98% of colleges are still using methods proven ineffective or even detrimental in educating about alcohol use (anyone do the mandatory portal click through w. cheugy videos thing?)However, what they’ve found to demonstrably effective, has been what they dub “personalized normative feedback” i.e. asking students questions like: “how many drinks per week do you have?” (say they answer 5 for ex.) then “what do you think is average?” Say they guess 6, so when you share the feedback that it’s actually closer to 3, that information alone has dramatic outcomes for reframing how students approach drinking (especially when the info comes from a peer). The unfortunate opposite of this comes in the form of media portrayal of college high-risk binge drinking. We spoke during the NBC interview about how those depictions also have a normative effect of *inflating* students’ perceptions of binge drinking, so stacking the start of a news clip like this with stock footage of just that might need some more careful consideration. Let me know what you think of the segment otherwise and comment on what weird alc trend we should make Colin do a TikTok on next ;) #socialentrepreneurs#research #education

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Learnings from the first Jinx Drinx events including not one, not two, but three different st. patty’s day bar crawls.

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