BevBlog

Long one of the biggest advertisers on television, the beverage industry is now trying to go for feature-length programming. A pair of behind-the-scenes “reality shows” are being shopped to American television networks — including one that has already been greenlighted by MTV — that center on real beverage companies.

One centers on a nascent, LA-based energy drink and the group of homeboys who are attempting to launch it. Created by professional party-thrower Greg Carney, who, according to Hollywood fan sites, is best known for dating – and even being photographed with – actress/singer/sister Haylie Duff, and Britney Spears choreographer Kevin Tancharoen, the show is tentatively titled “twentyfourseven.”

One of the producers, Ken Mok, is the executive producer of “America’s Top Model,” which means the brand should have plenty of access to the spokesmodels necessary for beverage convention displays.

Meanwhile, Clearly Canadian, a brand that has begun to once again show a pulse in some stores on both sides of the border, recently began pitching a show that would display the brand’s turnaround. Brent Lokash, the dynamic new CEO/turnaround specialist who is now running the show at CC, has modeled it on a popular Canadian show called “Venture.” The key to the show? The excellent access Lokash is prepared to grant filmmakers.

Obviously, they’ve never seen the documentary “startup dot-com.”

Clearly is trying to make other news, and recently signed another turnaround expert, the wizardly Phoenix Suns point guard Steve Nash, as a spokesman. When I asked him if he planned to appear on the show, Nash just gave a succinct “No.”

So much for giving your heart and soul to a brand. Too bad, because it would seem current generations of MTV — or, in the case of Clearly Canadian, VH1 — viewers would certainly seem ripe for an energy drink to call their own.

On the other hand, we’ve always found that half the fun of reality shows is rooting for the characters to fail.

A few months ago, Tom Standage, author of A History of the World in Six Glasses, outraged members of the beverage community by suggesting (horrors!) that the money spent on bottled water in the U.S., a country that has developed marvelously safe municipal water supplies, could easily pay for the cost of developing drinking water in the third world.

Well, that ticked a lot of beverage industry people off, because, as we know, there are a lot of people making a lot of money off of bottled water right now, and the suggestion that that money might have a greater social impact than pure capitalism struck a nerve.

Now here comes Ethos water, which is at least trying to do good by doing well, donating $.05 for every bottle of its water sold to promote safe drinking water around the world. We were skeptical when it first came out, given the level of competition for drinking water, but lo and behold, they immediately went out and signed a deal with coffee retailing giant Starbucks to sell the bottles in their stores, and to secure a $10 million pledge towards the cause, as well.

Amazingly, that roll-up is continuing on to Starbucks partner in canned coffee, PepsiCo, which just agreed to distribute Ethos to more than 100,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada – ramping distribution up exponentially from the 5,000 Starbucks that had started selling the water.

Stoppard’s point can be interpreted as this: in the U.S., bottled water is more of an extravagance than a necessity. Ethos makes that extravagance a means towards satisfying global necessities, and everyone in on this deal deserves to be commended.

It would be great to see other giants, like Nestle Waters and Coke, get on board, as well. Everyone deserves an extravagance as affordable as bottled water, but it sure tastes better knowing it’s accompanied by extravagant charity, as well.

We were all excited to go cruising around Boston with Izze sales guy extraordinaire Lance Gentry this week, but unfortunately the Hub decided to return to the days of Noah, leaving us unwilling to take part in his annual “Boston Sales Blitz.”

But we’re proud of them for sticking it out – apparently, the dude ended up with wet pants and about nineteen traffic tickets.

That noted, we don’t know about how effective man-on-the-street blitzes really are. Who among us hasn’t been passed a can of Fresca or Diet Pepsi by an over-eager marketing intern as a promotion? The rush of getting something for free is immediately devalued by the piles of cans that immediately appear in street-corner refuse bins.

Nevertheless, Izze seems to take its blitzes pretty seriously, and Lance couldn’t have been happier with the number of new retailers he’d signed up. Given where the brand tries to slot itself, it would’ve been terrific if he’d been able to crash the graduation going on at Harvard, but in order to do that he’d basically have had to swim across Harvard Yard.

We think they’re playing it right by “flooding the zone” in their target markets – too bad that nature decided to flood the zone, as well.

For the next Boston blitz, though, here’s something to note: in New England, there are really only two seasons – Winter, and the Fourth of July. If you’re handing out cold product, choose the latter.

Most readers of this site have probably heard about Wal-Mart forcing Coke to go direct to its warehouses rather than direct to its stores. If they don’t, Wal-Mart is going to come up with a private label sports drink and drop the brand. At least that’s what Coke says.

Two thoughts on this situation:

1. The Coke (and Pepsi) distribution systems are not necessarily good systems for retailers. This is becoming especially true as new brands, specifically in functional, energy, and water, become more important to retailers. It’s not easy for Coke to fix this century old system, but when Wal-Mart throws its weight around, people listen.

2. PowerAde’s brand equity is not much better than private label. People who want to pay for a “premium” sports drink are going to buy Gatorade. People who want value/cheap are going to pick the other brand that Wal-Mart sells. . If Wal-Mart can make a private label sports drink and squeeze out some more margin, they might as well give it a try.

Okay, Coke, you’ve redesigned Sprite. You’ve mashed together a lemon lime (or “Lymon” as you call it) into this yin-yang style image that’s supposed to look like an “S”. You’ve created a shiny silver can that feels more modern than the old. But, then you’ve kept the same old-stale Sprite logo and brandname on this thing. It’s like a splash of “corporation” has hit an otherwise urbanand hip feeling package. There’s an unresolved conflict in the package between the hip side and the conservative corporate side. Perhaps you didn’t want to upset the conservative Sprite drinker constituents…even though they probably left the brand 20 years ago. Coke, you were so close, but just couldn’t cross the finish line…

Judge for yourself….