Archer Roose and Elizabeth Banks Grace The Cover of Adweek.

From Hollywood Hits to Canned Rosé, Elizabeth Banks Blurs the Lines Between Entertainment and Marketing

The Brand Genius honoree is taking her brand work to the next level with Archer Roose Wines.

Elizabeth Banks is finally back home in L.A. after seven months in Toronto shooting Peacock’s forthcoming The Miniature Wife, a dark comedy series that Banks both stars in and produced alongside Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen.

It’s her latest project in a busy year, with the buzzy May release of Amazon’s drama series The Better Sister, in which Banks co-starred with Jessica Biel, and a September campaign launch for cosmetics label No7, a brand she has fronted since 2023. Not to mention the meteoric rise of canned wine brand Archer Roose, which Banks co-owns and promotes as chief creative officer, landing her on ADWEEK’s 2025 Brand Genius list.

Unlike most of her roles, the latter is one she may just have manifested. The multihyphenate actor-director-producer-comedian, known for her work on blockbusters like The Hunger Games and television shows including 30 Rock, was moodboarding with a handful of girlfriends on a weekend trip just before the pandemic.

“We were approaching middle age. Our kids were getting older. We were a little bummed out,” she said. They were all pondering what the next stage of their lives would look like. Banks found herself inserting an image of Glaceau Smartwater on her board. “I was like, ‘What’s my Smartwater? What’s my version of that? I feel like there’s something out there that I can authentically get behind.’”

By that point, Banks had long outgrown the limited label of “actor.” She’d established herself as a force to be reckoned with in entertainment, having launched Brownstone Productions in 2002 with husband Max Handelman, taking on major projects from the Pitch Perfect franchise to the 2023 breakout Emma Seligman flick Bottoms. Along the way, Banks also began directing, with a slate of rollicking feature-length films like Charlie’s Angels and the notorious horror-comedy Cocaine Bear.

She has also worked extensively in advertising, inking national brand partnerships with Old Navy and Realtor.com in the 2010s, and later applying her directorial skills in a Super Bowl ad for Persil ProClean in 2017 and a playful 2021 spot for Cadillac.

Still, Banks was looking for a piece of the brand landscape she could own more wholly — and that truly reflected her interests and values.

It took a few years, but that piece arrived in the form of a sleek aluminum can with a moose printed on the front. One of her agents had texted her, saying: “‘Don’t take this the wrong way. I don’t want to offend you, but I feel like you’re a canned wine person,’” Banks recalled, laughing.

She wasn’t offended, having long felt put off by traditional wine culture. “The way I grew up, expensive wine was not a thing,” Banks said. “It was culturally separate from me in that it felt a little pretentious. I always felt talked down to, like I didn’t know enough about wine.”

After a glowing review from her sister and a meeting with Archer Roose Wines founder Marian Leitner-Waldman, Banks was all in. She became a co-owner and CCO in 2021.

More than the brand face

The wine brand announced Banks’ appointment in a playfully rogue ad campaign launched in October 2021, made by the Boston-based creative shop Colossus. In the spot, the actor shows up unannounced in Leitner-Waldman’s home and quickly makes herself a permanent fixture, chugging Archer Roose Wines from the fridge, clipping her toenails in the sink, and staying overnight. Before Leitner-Waldman can catch her breath, Banks owns half the company.

“The recurring personas in our ads of Elizabeth as the ‘famous person’ and me as the ‘business person’ are exaggerated parodies of how we collaborate in real life,” Leitner-Waldman said.

“She knows the modern consumer doesn’t care about terroir and tannins. They care about drinking a high-quality wine, served in an accessible format that fits their lifestyle, and she helps us get that message across in a witty, fun, down-to-earth way that’s uniquely her.”

Now, as a part owner, Banks is fully embedded in the business, involved in decisions on everything from distribution strategies and winemaker partnerships to brand positioning and marketing.  

Since her entry, Archer Roose Wines has made major strides. In 2022, it secured investment from Constellation Brands, the beverage giant behind Corona, Modelo, and Kim Crawford wines. It’s available in all 50 U.S. states, and its wines have picked up a handful of industry awards. Last year, it grew by double digits and sold over 100,000 cases. This spring, it unveiled its first pinot noir.

Much of the acceleration has been driven by expansion into direct-to-consumer sales as well as distribution in new venues, such as Regal Cinemas, Dave & Busters, and Princess Cruises. Five years ago, Archer Roose Wines inked a deal with JetBlue to carry a single variety, which has since expanded to owning the airline’s entire wine selection and a signature Skyhigh Spritz wine cocktail.

Banks’ background as a Hollywood mainstay has only buoyed the brand. Not only has her role as its face aided growth; she’s also drawn inspiration from the complex process of filmmaking in building the Archer Roose Wines business alongside Leitner-Waldman.

“Every film is like launching its own brand or product,” she said. “We create a product, and it’s got widgets and all the things that go into it, and we have a production line, and we’ve got partnerships, and we’ve got collaborators. We also have to understand who the end consumer is, and why we’re making the thing, why we’re staying passionate about it. How do we then tell that story to the end consumer and get them to buy in?

“The thought process behind it all [has] a lot of crossover. A lot of it is really about a vision, a voice, and a story.”

It’s a process she’s also mastered with No7, the U.K. skincare and beauty giant. As the brand’s first U.S. celebrity ambassador, she has tied the label to her own personal experiences, speaking candidly about the value of sleep and self-care, and the benefits of integrating No7 products into her own routine.

That alignment makes her pitch feel authentic, just as it has with Archer Roose Wines.

Fusing the personal and the commercial

Over the years, Banks feels that the Archer Roose Wines brand has become intimately linked to her own personal brand.

One part of that picture is Banks’ commitment to women-led and focused projects. Earlier in her career, she collaborated with the American Heart Association to help raise awareness of heart disease in women, directing and fronting the organization’s 2011 short film Just a Little Heart Attack. She’s been an outspoken supporter of abortion access, has advocated on behalf of nonprofit Dress for Success for equipping women in need with professional attire, and in 2016 established WhoHaha, a digital platform spotlighting women comedians.

Her decision to join Archer Roose Wines was informed, in part, by her commitment to women-led work.

“It means so much to me to be in this incredible group of women who want to be leaders in the spirits industry,” she said. “This is an industry where there are not a lot of women leaders.”

Most importantly, Banks believes that her own talent can help redefine what good wine looks like.

“Entertaining people is what I do 99% of the time,” she said. “I’m bringing that core skill to everything that we put out, and touching everything with a little bit of that wink and nod, that little sense of, ‘We know we’re trying to sell you something, but we do have a great product.’

“We take the wine really seriously. That’s Marian’s part of it. But we don’t take ourselves too seriously, and that’s my part of it.”