Top-Shelf Marketing How to turn a liquor that "tastes like cough syrup" into a hit.
By David Whitford

(FORTUNE Small Business) – What do you recommend?" I ask Sidney Frank, who has invited me into his bedroom and offered me a drink. The closely held Sidney Frank Importing Co. made $115 million last year on sales of $350 million, largely from two brands: Grey Goose--at about $30 a bottle, among the most expensive vodkas you can buy--and Jägermeister, a 70-proof, viscous green concoction that Frank says "tastes like cough syrup." That's appropriate, actually, because Frank all but invented viral marketing. He never spent a penny on traditional media buys for Jägermeister; nevertheless, he sold more than a million cases of it last year.

"Pascal makes a marvelous cosmo," says Frank, before calling to his personal chef. "Pascal!"

"Yes, sir."

"Cosmo for David."

"Two cosmo?" asks Pascal, very Frenchly.

"Aaaaah--okay," Frank mutters, clicking the remote; Clark Gable's Comrade X vanishes from Frank's giant-screen TV. Pulling back the covers, he rolls over on his side, swings his bare feet to the floor, and with an assist from nurse Nick, stands, steadies himself, and sets off shakily across the room. Frank is 84. Even in shorts and a pajama top, he resembles Winston Churchill. He speaks with a gravelly voice that suggests a lifetime of cigars and neat scotches.

Company headquarters are back in New Rochelle, N.Y., but Frank spends his winters here in Encinitas, Calif. His cavernous bedroom is also an art gallery (Calder, Chagall, Henry Moore, Picasso), a conference room, and a kitchen with a serving counter where he takes his meals. Tonight Pascal has made steak with onion rings. "I can't eat too much steak," says Frank, ripping into a two-inch-thick slab. "Has too much calories."

Frank's appetite--for steak, for booze, for money, for life--is the raw ingredient of his success. He grew up poor on a farm in Connecticut. At Brown, where he lasted just one year, his roommate was Ed Sarnoff, whose father was David Sarnoff, chairman of RCA. Ed Sarnoff introduced Frank to his future wife, Skippy Rosenstiel ("one of the richest girls in the country at the time"), who introduced him to her father, Lewis Rosenstiel, chairman of Schenley Co. distillery, who hired Frank, promoted him all the way to president, and ultimately fired him (a story for another story).

It was only when Skippy died in the early 1970s that Frank thought seriously about going into business for himself. ("I figured I had to do something to earn some money. I liked that standard of living.") And it wasn't until years later that he really made his mark with Jägermeister. The catalyst was a story in the May 12, 1985, edition of the Baton Rouge Advocate that described Jägermeister as a "cult drink" and passed along rumors that it was laced with Quaaludes and aphrodisiacs. The story was nonsense, of course; Frank might have sued. Instead he made a million copies and hired 1,000 young women, known as Jägerettes, to pass them out in bars. "We got a break, and we took advantage of it," Frank says. "You have to have a little luck, you know?"

Frank hopes to get lucky again with his next endeavor: Blue Goose gin, set to launch this spring. He sees his daughter Cathy Halstead, 55, eventually taking over the company. Just not too soon, he hopes. "I don't plan to retire for another ten years," he says, adding, "Hey, Pascal! Give us a couple of Jägermeisters!"