BevBlog

One thing that has always boggled my mind are companies whose product portfolio consists entirely of novelty products. I’m talking about sexually explicit labels/names, glow in the dark packaging, licensed products, gimmick flavors, etc.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but making a successful beverage business relies on repeat sales. Making a REALLY successful beverage business, like a Hansen or Glaceau, requires making a LOT of repeat sales. It needs to be available for purchase by the case at places like club stores.

Novelty products are generally not available in mainstream retail channels (cstores, grocery, etc) and are instead left with non-traditional retail channels….like, say, Spencer Gifts. Novelty products are often purchased once and, in many cases, are not consumed but rather placed on someone’s desk or in the window of their dorm room. (We have a pretty nice collection of energy drinks and Skeleteens Sodas in our office)

For example, consider “Sum Poosie Energy Drink“. This is a product that in my opinion is initially purchased due to shock value or humor. Consumers do not make repeat purchases or buy it by the case. The best chance for success for this brand is in on-premise venues, but given this brand’s sexually oriented branding, Sum Poosie will struggle to translate this into higher volume channels. Furthermore, if the product were to actually spread due to shock value, it would eventually get the point where the shock value wears off. This is the very definition of “novelty”. Everyone has covered it and it’s no longer to cool to have a bottle in your dorm window. Then what?

Using a novelty product to launch a company is OK, assuming it’s just your “foot in the door”. Novelty products like Sum Poosie often get free PR that cannot be bought with the resources of a small company….But unless your only goal is to produce a short-lived punch line, the trick is figuring out how to build the free PR into something that is commercially viable and has staying power.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of an example where a company has actually done this Probably the closest example is Jones Soda, which used novelty to try and bolster its existing brand. It’s still my opinion that the “Jones Soda” name was lost in much of the PR.

So, my question for the bevblogosphere is, are all novelty products one-trick ponies? If Jones can’t create a major upswing from its PR line, can anyone? Your comments are appreciated….

Because we’re lame enough to do so, we got all excited this morning about a release from the folks over at Power Bar that they had developed a “beverage system” for extreme athletes. Not that we like Power Bars, mind you, but we do like strong brands and Power Bar has shown a lot of staying power.

But it turns out that the beverage system is a powder; that’s too bad, because something like Power Bar is a real threat to the Gatorade juggernaut, which, we’ve made it clear in other writing, can only be toppled from outside the sports drink category.

We don’t think Power Bar could do that toppling on its own, but it presents an interesting idea: a brand that has credibility among performance athletes and armchair athletes alike (much like Gatorade itself) moving to a sports drink platform might be the most easily conceived Gatorade competitor.

The fact is, the sports drink category, which has grown fast and furious because of Gatorade’s popularity, is in need of a shakeup, and most of the competition out there either isn’t well-funded, or tends to rely on nerdy studies that lose the typical Gatorade drinker’s attention after the first sentence.

We think vitaminwater perform has a solid shot at peeling off some of Gatorade’s market share at some point, because it’s a powerful brand that overlaps many Gatorade consumers. But Power Bars are even closer to that demographic. If they made a strong move to the hoop, we’d watch it closely.

I recently tried POM Wonderful’s new “POM Tea” line of products. Not what I expected at all. Way too sweet and sugary. It was tough to taste the pomegranate or the tea. Unfortunately, “flavor chemists gone wild” is the way to best describe its taste.

Of course, there’s the packaging….It really catches the eye. It’s original, clean, yet seemingly simple. It’s the type of thing that people in the industry will love. If it hasn’t already won awards, it probably will…it’s definitely worthy of them. However, practically speaking, the package is difficult to open and cumbersome to drink from relative to other single serve beverages. Then there’s the notion that it’s reusable…..well, I’m at a loss for words.

What’s my point? In my opinion, POM Tea really missed it big time with this product. I appreciate their intentions, but it seems that in trying to do many things with this product they didn’t actually create anything that was good. If they can fix this product, they’ve got a huge opportunity to go beyond pomegranate juice and hit the mainstream.

My hope is that they’ll reformulate this product using a much lighter and simpler formulation. I’ll even give them a formulation that I’ve made myself :)….Use that great blend of green tea and POM Wonderful pomegranate that was co branded with The Republic of Tea (aka “Pomegranate Green Tea”). Add honey. Put it in a nice bottle. That’s it. A simple, great tasting and very marketable product.

So, here’s Coke’s latest and greatest idea: spend $200k with the Culinary Institute of America to come up with a menu of cocktail recipes that can be sold at restaurants across America. Concepts such as the Nestea Lemonade Caramel and Coca-Cola Spice, along with approximately 100 other recipes, have been created over the course of the two year project. These drinks, in turn, will be showcased to major restaurant chains who will be encouraged to create their own proprietary versions. In addition, these concoctions have been created to follow the model of wine and food pairings.

One can’t help but wonder what sort of ROI Coke will achieve from this project. CSD sales are down, and creating a premium priced non-alcoholic cocktail for casual restaurant chains isn’t something that’s going to counter the decline. I’d question that it’s going to do anything positive for Coke aside from creating some free PR and even that will be hard to turn into sales.

In any event, this is not innovation. To me, it seems like Coke will take on almost any project that doesn’t involve innovating its core product portfolio….Diversions like this are great stall tactics, making people perceive Coke as doing something different. But, different isn’t good if it doesn’t help move the business forward. In this case, I think it could even take the business backwards, making consumers of these cocktails view off-the-shelf Coke products as something that’s bland or boring.

So, Coke, it’s time to take the free PR — especially the positive stuff as in this case — and do something good with it. Some culinary help with your core brands, might not be a bad place to start. People may be drinking less, but their drinking better — super premium CSDs, energy drinks, organic beverages, etc — and it’s all passing you by.

Blue colored soft drinks never survive. Yes, I mean products that use blue colored fluid — not things like blueberry or the few other things in nature that have a hue that is naturally blue.

The greatest example of a blue failure is Pepsi Blue. Not only did it use blue coloring, but it even used the word “blue” in the name to call extra attention to it. There have been many many many energy drinks that use blue coloring that have attempted to make it in the market. Russell Simmons Def Con 3 is the only one that actually was memorable, but that’s more because Mr. Simmons is not the type of character you typically meet in this industry.

Anyway, since it is my job to now hypothesize about the inevitable failure of blue-colored products, I’d suggest that blue — especially that bright blue that’s usually used — is a color that is clearly not derived from nature and, therefore, in the subconscious mind of consumers, they don’t want to drink things that don’t have some loose tie to nature. Whether I’m right or wrong about that theory is open for debate, but the numbers don’t lie — blue drinks don’t sell.

Agree? Disagree? Is there a product that is blue and actually was commercially successful?? Feel free to post comments below.

It’s not quite the Battle of Vicksburg, but the folks from PepsiCo — New Yorkers all — have scored quite a coup in grabbing the concession rights to Rock City, TN. Yes, THAT Rock City, the one that screams at you from billboards and barn roofs for hundreds of miles to “See! Rock! City!”

The roadside attraction, second only to South of the Border as an interstate highway icon, sits near Chattanooga, long one of the core towns in the southern Coke juggernaut. But the holding company that owns Rock City, as well as Lookout Mountain and the Incline Railway — See Rock City Inc., if you can believe it — let Pepsi carpetbag its way into a five-year contract this spring.

What’s next? Pepsi coolers in the Braves’ dugout?

Here’s a simple theory for the energy drink category:
Taste is inversely proportional to the perceived functionality of the product.

It will probably sound simple and obvious to some — and lots of energy drink companies have figured this out — but there are plenty of people out there that still don’t get it. Most likely it’s some sort of placebo effect, but consumers simply don’t believe that something that tastes like soda, smells like soda, and looks like soda is actualy going to provide them energy. Everyone has “functional” products that they use in everyday life that work similarly….My own personal item is mouthwash. If it doesn’t have that burning sensation in my mouth, then it’s simply not working.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are products that taste so bad that they absolutely have to be functional. No one is going to keep chugging that 100% pure ginseng or seaweed infused beverage if it isn’t. These products might be good in some sort of niche environment, but their chance of mainstream success is zero.

As with most things in life, it’s all about finding a happy medium. Too much soda taste means that many consumers won’t believe that it can possibly be functional. Too much energy or herbal taste takes the enjoyment out of the product. I believe that there’s a formula that can be used….A minimum ratio of 20% energy flavor & 80% soda flavor all the way up to 80% energy flavor & 20% soda flavor.

To date, this range has been the only area where mainstream success has been had. Red Bull, Rockstar, and Monster have done it with flavors skewed towards energy/functionality. New products, such as Full Throttle, Airforce Nutrisoda, Monster Khaos, and Rockstar Juiced are trying to gain momentum from the other end of the spectrum.

Well, you folks over at Fizzy Lizzy and Izze, and at whatever weird corporate entitity has taken over The Switch, and just about anyone else who thought about carbonating juices can run for cover now.

Pepsi’s got it covered, having decided to take yet another one of its juice brands, tart it up with carbonation and wrap it in plastic. Look for Dole Sparklers in the fall, value-priced in 16.9 oz. PET.

Whatever happened to the good old days when the big companies would just buy companies with good ideas and run them into the ground, rather than their new practice: appropriating them, and then debasing them through dilution?

Welcome to BevNET.com’s new BevBlog section. This is a new editorial section designed to provide our readers with up-to-date content from our editors.

Questions or comments? Send them to staff@bevnet.com