After six years of quiet brand building in the shadows, premium functional drinks maker GLOW Beverages is ready to step into the light.
The California-based beverage company announced this month it has brought on celebrity influencer Kylie Jenner and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott as brand ambassadors and equity stakeholders, kickstarting a national media campaign aimed at rapidly increasing brand awareness.
The partnerships arrive as GLOW also introduces an expanded product portfolio, which includes its two flagship lines of sparkling hydration and sparkling energy drinks, both packaged in 16.9 oz. bottles with Mango Apricot and Spicy Watermelon as well as new Ginger Lemon, Tiger’s Blood, Cherry Lime and Pineapple Blood Orange flavors. Beyond the core line extension, GLOW is debuting a new Ultra Smooth Alkaline Water in 1 liter bottles online and at Costco stores in the coming weeks. Finally, the company is introducing 2 oz. energy shots in Mixed Berry and Grape flavors. Each of the lines, except the shots, are available in both PET and glass bottles.
When CEO John Larson created the brand in 2016, he envisioned GLOW as meeting the opportunity for functional beverages that weren’t sugary energy drinks or aimed at high-performance athletes. Hitting the market well before the recent wave of CBD, focus and relaxation beverages helped transform functional sparkling water into an emerging trend, GLOW pitched itself as a premium, better-for-you product but had little mainstream exposure.
Bootstrapped for much of the company’s existence, Larson said GLOW found a “sweet spot” in the vending channel through a relationship with Core-Mark, and had opened up c-stores with chains like Rebel Convenience. However, when the pandemic hit in 2020, the on-premise business evaporated and the brand was forced to look for funding and develop a new strategy. Larson ultimately found a financial and strategic partner in World Tech Toys CEO Kev Kouyoumjian and his brother Vic Kouyoumjian, who sought out A-list celebrity partnerships and have helped steer the company to what they hope will now be a breakout moment.
“We saw what Bang was doing with girls with bikinis and influencers and we saw what BodyArmor was doing with all the athletes like James Harden, Kobe Bryant, Mike Trout and all that,” Kev Kouyoumjian said. “So we wanted to kind of take a little bit of both, but maybe also make it like a lifestyle – the healthy drink anybody and everybody could drink from a kid to an athlete to a celebrity to anybody and everybody.”
According to Kouyoumjian, Jenner and Prescott are now playing a key role in growing GLOW’s brand awareness, each reaching distinct consumer demographics that give the brand play within luxury celebrity circles and in the sports world. Poolside photos of Jenner promoting the brand posted to her social media accounts on October 18 generated a slate of earned media in outlets like Cosmopolitan and Page Six.
GLOW’s relationship with Jenner – who is reportedly paid in excess of $1 million per Instagram post – will also include product placement appearances on her Hulu reality series The Kardashians. As an equity stakeholder, Jenner’s partnership with GLOW is exclusive, Kouyoumjian added, making them the sole non-alcoholic beverage brand Jenner will promote (though she is still free to partner with other brands in the alcoholic sector).
Larson attributed the success of BodyArmor, where pro athletes came in as equity stakeholders, as being one reason for a rise in celebrity brand investments over the past several years. In the cases of Jenner and Prescott, he said they not only drink the product regularly, but the premium branding and healthy positioning was a right fit for their own public identities.
“GLOW isn’t a me-too brand, and with that being the case it really speaks to the lifestyles of Kylie and Dak,” Larson said. “So you look at Kylie, I mean, she’s a young, busy businesswoman. She’s a young mom, she’s socially active clearly. And that product was pretty much made for her, it fit in perfectly.
“And if you look at Dak, off of the playing field Dak is also a very active guy,” he added. “There’s a time in place for athlete drinks, and then there’s that transition through the rest of the day and GLOW has use occasions from the time you wake up till the time you call the night.”
Beyond their top stars, Kouyoumjian said GLOW has a large team of influencers who boast social media follower counts ranging from 300 to 25 million. The company said it has already spent about $10 million on marketing efforts so far this year and has budgeted another $10 million to be spent supporting social campaigns over the coming months.
But it’s not just online buzz, he added – GLOW is also growing its brick-and-mortar footprint, adding 2,500 Walmart stores nationwide as well as Costco, Albertsons, Ralph’s, and Fred Meyer. The relationship with Prescott has also opened doors for the brand, Kouyoumjian said, as the quarterback helped introduce the company to 7-Eleven where it will begin a 2,000 store test later this year. Prescott partnered with the retail chain last year as part of its “Superfan Influencer” team program and had worked closely with the company’s leadership.
As well, Larson said the company is also continuing to position GLOW as a mixer for on-premise sales, launching in several Las Vegas nightclubs this summer while the energy shot line is rolling out to various airports and other travel channel accounts.
GLOW currently utilizes a hybrid distribution network across the country, with various DSD houses and broadline distributors like KeHE, Core-Mark and DPI Specialty Foods.
“We’ll continue to work through that and identify what our best route is,” Larson said. “Likely we’ll start to transition to a DSD network as we continue to grow just to make sure that we’ve got the shelves full and we’ve got the feet on the street across the country.”
The company is also working to fill several executive level positions as well as hiring new sales and marketing team members to support the growth.
“We have a full marketing team for social and online that we’ve hired, we also have on the ground people we’re actually hiring as well, so we’re gonna try to get this everywhere and anywhere,” Kouyoumjian said. “This is similar to, I guess what the Uber guy said: ‘As long as I get a customer to sit in my car one time, they’re going to be an Uber customer for life.’ That’s kind of the idea we have – we get a customer to try GLOW once we’re gonna have them for life because it’s such a great product.”