Kill Cliff Aims to Expand Audience With Design Shift

After attempting to create a fitness forward brand, Kill Cliff spent the last year pivoting its marketing and identity back towards its core military audience. This year, the Atlanta-based functional beverage company is looking to go one step further and expand its consumer base with a change in design that positions it as an approachable clean energy play with an array of use occasions.

President John Timar said that at the time he took on the role in late 2018, much of Kill Cliff’s “irreverent, fun” brand identity from its early days had been lost through turnover in leadership and changes in strategy that closely aligned the company with fitness and athletic performance. The past year, he said, was aimed at reestablishing the core elements of the brand, which was co-founded by ex-Navy SEALs, including military affiliation, humor and Americana imagery.

“We have to be who we are and be authentic, and if we are authentic we are either going to win or we are going to lose, but at least we will have done so being who we are,” he said. “I was on the SEAL team with [founder] Todd Ehrlich back in the day. When he first started the company, I was around and I knew the initial group and their mindset. So we just went back to being who we are.”

The change in visual identity is part of shifting the focus back on overall branding rather than product, Timar said, particularly ahead of planned expansions this fall for energy line Ignite in Walmart, Publix and other retailers. All Kill Cliff products will now be streamlined to use the design from the CBD line.

In addition, the brand’s flagship product Kill Cliff Recover will revert back to its original name, Kill Cliff. Meanwhile, Kill Cliff Ignite will receive a new flavor, Smashing Citrus.

“The use occasions are way more broad than just post-workout,” Timar said of the name change, noting that the need for a “recovery” drink may also have a negative connotation for some people.

The next step is for Kill Cliff to not just expand beyond its core military audience, but to appeal to them in a way that respects their broad interests and lifestyles. The military and veteran community reflects “people from every walk of life,” Timar said, and their interests — music festivals, video games, mixed martial arts, extreme sports and outdoor lifestyle activities among them — represent a wide array of marketing and innovation opportunities. The increasing popularity of CBD as an alternative treatment for health conditions faced by many veterans — such as opioid addiction, PTSD, insomnia and chronic pain — also underscore the ingredients range of medical applications.

Rather than selling directly into the military, the brand’s objective is to tap into what Timar called the “military affinity audience.”

“Our brand was so narrowly focused on the functional fitness community, I saw it as being a very difficult task to keep doing that more, better, [and] faster to get to some other place,” he said. “The military has a pathway to getting to a broader audience.”

That pathway has changed recently: Kill Cliff is now in a position to potentially benefit from Bang’s move into Pepsi’s distribution network in May. The energy drink brand was previously moved primarily through Anheuser Busch DSD houses, leaving gaps in the amorphous “energy-plus” category for distributors. The beer giant has already taken some steps to fill those on its own, announcing last month a partnership with Super Coffee.

Shortly before the initial U.S. outbreak of COVID-19, Kill Cliff signed on with Molson Coors distributor Glazer’s Beer and Beverage, which serves six Southern states. But online continues to be where the brand is thriving; according to Timar, direct-to-consumer sales are up in the high triple-digits year-over-year. And with event marketing and sampling suspended due to the pandemic, Kill Cliff has amped up its already robust digital content output by live-streaming content multiple nights each week. When influencers or celebrities (Ray Lewis, Bear Grylls) are involved and simulcast live streams from their own accounts, the company reaches an audience of millions, he noted.

“The way we’ve gone about [digital content] has really allowed us to elevate our brand and get larger awareness in a very efficient way,” he said. “It’s something we can do all the time and something that everybody gets something out of.”