After a year off the market, ‘Merica Energy will be reborn on the Fourth of July.
Aiming to broaden its appeal with mainstream consumers, the Virginia-based energy drink company announced this week that it will relaunch with new packaging and flavors this weekend, with direct-to-consumer online sales beginning, appropriately, on Independence Day.
A subdivision of supplements maker Core Nutritionals, which also operates The Nutrition Corner chain of fitness stores, ‘Merica Energy launched in 2018 as a sugar free energy drink line called Red, White & Boom that featured satirical patriotic branding. According to president and CEO Doug Miller, the brand aimed to grab consumers’ attention with its humorous packaging and drive repeat sales with a better-for-you formulation.
The original branding for ‘Merica Energy attempted to play both sides of the political aisle with partisan flavor names such as “Let’s Make ‘Merica Grape Again” and “ImPEACHment” but also sought to bridge the left/right divide with a tongue-in-cheek attitude: each can featured a cartoon of a shirtless, muscular U.S. President.
“We saw that people would come into our [Nutrition Corner] stores and they would usually gravitate towards a really crazy label, like a skull with a sword through it and a snake or something, right?” Miller said. “But at the end of the day, they might buy that product because of the crazy marketing or the appeal of that label, but they would never come back and buy that product again because it was such a [bad] product.”
According to Miller, early sales of the brand were solid, particularly in the specialty channel. ‘Merica was distributed through Muscle Foods USA and later formed a relationship with Europa Sports, carving out a distribution footprint in the gym channel. The company was beginning to expand internationally and target the convenience channel when the pandemic hit, causing sales in the fitness channel to plummet. With ‘Merica Energy in stasis, Miller said he used the pandemic as an opportunity to halt manufacturing, pull the product from the market and retool the brand to have a more neutral appeal.
The rebranded products have toned down the potentially controversial political humor, including removing “the jacked dead Presidents” (in Miller’s words) from the back of the can, and instead focus on general Americana. Flavor names include Freedom (bomb pop), Victory (cream soda), Patriot Punch (tropical fruit punch), Daytona Beach (pineapple mango) and County Fair (blue razz and cotton candy). Each 16 oz. can contains zero sugar, guarana extract, 200 mg of caffeine and added nootropics for focus. Each unit retails for $2.59-$2.99.
“When people walk into QuikTrip or Sheetz, what is going to make them buy this random brand? What is going to set us apart from every other energy drink that’s out there?” Miller said. “We feel like with this new CPG-focused packaging that we have, you’ve got to at least be curious to pick this up, and then the taste is going to keep bringing you back.”
To support the brand’s new retail strategy, ‘Merica has hired energy drink veteran James Gracely to serve as director of sales.
Gracely comes to the company from IGNITE International Brands, the CBD and beverage producer founded by CEO and Instagram celebrity Dan Bilzerian. Gracely, a former VP of sales at VPX Pharmaceuticals, was largely responsible for building out IGNITE’s beverage business, which included an energy drink, bottled water, vodka and tequila.
However, IGNITE’s business suffered during the pandemic as Bilzerian found himself unable to host the types of content-generating events and parties that fueled his social media following, Gracely said. In turn, Bilzerian’s social presence dropped significantly (he’s only posted to Instagram twice since August, not including Stories) and the IGNITE products were not being promoted to the degree that a CPG brand demands — a quality he said ‘Merica will excel at.
“It just wasn’t gonna be a good fit,” Gracely said. “Given what I know about the space, their inability to really show love to the brands just made it an uphill battle and it wasn’t worth fighting with them.”
Though Bilzerian himself has been the target of controversy and lawsuits over the past year, IGNITE reported $10.1 million in sales in its unaudited fourth quarter 2020 earnings report and its beverage division remains active. For Gracely, he said the experience gave him a valuable education in brand building he plans to take to ‘Merica.
“I helped build that thing, man. It was an undertaking, it was a lot of fun, I learned a lot about building an entire beverage company — especially spirits,” Gracely said. “There’s a lot of professionalism over there so I learned a lot on the business side as well, not just the beverage space.”
At ‘Merica, Gracely said he aims to take the brand outside of the specialty channel and focus on mainstream retail, beginning in the Southeast. He noted the brand has “a lot of synergies” with the military channel and will target those accounts in addition to grocery and convenience stores.
Although beverage brands taking political stances has resulted in controversy in recent months, from The Coca-Cola Company becoming the subject of boycotts by Republicans to criticism of The Black Rifle Coffee Company by Democrats, Miller hopes ‘Merica Energy can cut through heated culture wars and have a unifying effect.
“We make fun of ourselves, right? We like to do dumb American [stuff]. That’s just what we do,” he said. “Our launch video has a flamethrower and a can cannon if that gives you any sense of what we do. So we like to have a great time and at the end of the day, if you are offended by the Red, White, and Blue that’s your problem.”