Jack McNamara has never tried to hide his considerable ambitions, nor has he minimized the size of his task.
Over the course of a decade as founder and CEO of functional beverage platform Tru, he gradually shepherded the Massachusetts-based brand from its early days as a liquid shot through to its current format – a line of 12 oz. canned RTDs – picking up industry backers (Polar boss Ralph Crowley) and investors (BTomorrow Ventures) along the way.
And though its branding makeover and entrance into a hot new category may seem like a major new chapter for Tru, McNamara sees it simply as additional small steps towards the final destination.
“For us, it’s all about starting at square one and leveling up, whether it’s the distributor, the retailer, or our team, and that’s kind of the philosophy we’ve taken and over the past couple of years,” McNamara said on the phone last week from his new home in Houston, where he’s been seeding the brand in Texas retailers (Central Market) and on the West Coast (Erehwon).
Following that approach, Tru’s distribution expansion, now being overseen by ex-Red Bull man Sean McDonough, has been piecemeal and purposeful. Growing out of the Northeast, Tru has looked to supplement placement in key chains – Walmart, Wegmans, Meijer – with DSD support, picking up partners like Heidelberg Distributing and DeCrescente Distributing. Once a regional DSD presence has been established, division sales directors come in to run the show.
The branding update rolling out now is part of that approach; rather than attacking an apparent weakness (it’s not, McNamara says), it’s about seizing an opportunity to make important incremental gains. The makeover makes some important visual tweaks – ditching the hard-to-read cursive, adding a stripe for easy SKU ID and making clear the product is sparkling – are designed to aid on-shelf presentation, but also help Tru communicate its unique structure, in which each functional need state features just a single SKU.
Many distributors, McNamara noted, view Tru as an energy drink brand because that SKU happens to be one of its strongest performers (though, ironically, sleep-aid Dream is the real workhorse, he said). With the new branding, the company has tweaked its pitch to be “the carbonated complement to Vitaminwater,” and its aforementioned brand architecture follows the same one-SKU-for-one-function formula.
“Why reinvent the wheel?,” asked McNamara. “Why not follow this formula and see if it works in a carbonated format?”
And that plays into the product itself: rather than revolutionary products, Tru’s talent is packaging familiar, essential functional drinks into an approachable platform. That carries benefits and risks: Tru can be merchandised in multiple locations in-store, but creating an overall strategy has been challenging. Its newest innovation launched online earlier this month — prebiotic sparkling water Tru Gutsy, sweetened with fruit juice and with just 5 calories per 12 oz. can — reflects those conditions, giving Tru access to a hot category (+35% year-over-year, per data from Brightfield) already thick with established competition.
For its part, Tru is leaning away from the suddenly resurgent “soda” and “pop” callouts: McNamara frames it as “an enhanced water” that slots in naturally with the existing product line.
As for the next incremental steps, McNamara already has that planned out, too: Tru will launch powder versions of Dream, Energy, Focus and Gutsty in Q4 this year.