Last Spring, buzz began building around a new influencer-driven TikTok community called #WaterTok, where content creators share tips for jazzing up water with flavored powders and liquid drink mixes. The hashtag quickly spilled out beyond the confines of TikTok and into headlines in the New York Times, Buzzfeed and Today, and to many the trend of drink mix obsessives seemed like just another quirky social media trend.
But for The Jel Sert Company, a 98-year-old family owned drink mix manufacturer with a brand portfolio featuring products like Wyler’s, Welch’s, Sunkist and more, #WaterTok has been nothing short of a revelation.
According to Ken Wegner, president of Jel Sert, the company noticed an uplift in its powder mix sales begin around the same as #WaterTok’s press coverage was picking up around April and May 2023. Today, the company claims sales are up roughly 25%, with some retail channels, such as mass and value, experiencing a 40%-50% increase.
Now, the company is building an entire marketing and innovation strategy around it, with a “As Seen On #WaterTok” campaign and upcoming flavor launches tailored to the TikTok community.
“We are strongly believing and seeing that the category for Jel Sert has reset at a new level,” Wegner said in a phone interview. “We’ve had this explosive growth over the past nine-plus months and we see that level being sustained, and now what we’re doing is growing it from there.”
What Is WaterTok Exactly?
In many ways, #WaterTok is a lot simpler than it might sound.
The hashtag connects videos where TikTok users share reviews and tips for flavoring water, typically through branded drink mixes and syrups. Many videos feature experimental recipes, made by blending multiple drink mix flavors together to create unique combinations.
In recent years, Jel Sert had heavily focused on innovation within its drink mix portfolio to help modernize and grow its portfolio of powdered drink mixes. The company owns the Wyler’s, Wyler’s Light and Pure Kick brands and in 2020 it began creating new co-branded powder and liquid drink mixes for products like Skittles, Starburst, Sunkist and Hi-C. Since then, there’s been additional co-branded offerings like Warheads, Jolly Rancher, Margaritaville and Sonic.
It’s that fun arrangement of recognizable brands, combined with Jel Sert’s value positioning, that has helped fuel its popularity on #WaterTok, Wegner suggested, with many content creators helping to steer consumers towards the products by sharing the retailers where they purchased the mixes.
As the mass and value channels have led the company’s growth, Wegner cited retailers like Dollar General, Family Dollar and Walmart – where an 8-pack can sell for as little as $0.99 – as top outlets. That lower price point helps feed the experimental “recipe” element of #WaterTok, where content creators may feel more comfortable potentially wasting a stick of Wyler’s or Skittles drink mix in an unpalatable blend than they would a more premium brand that commands a higher price per serving, such as Liquid I.V. or Celsius.
“There’s a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck who can’t afford and won’t buy those types of [premium] items,” Wegner said. “So our ability to have products that have fun flavors, that bring more water usage and more water drinking to people, and in the case of Pure Kick offer function, all at this great value … it’s kind of a win-win.”
Citing NielsenIQ data in a November announcement, Jel Sert reported that in the 52-weeks ending September 16, 2023 its unit sales grew 19% year-over-year to over 85 million units sold annually and its combined brand portfolio comprised nearly a quarter (23%) of the U.S. stick pack drink mix space by unit share.
An Unexpected Lift
For Jel Sert, the initial boost in sales was unexpected, and Wegner described the #WaterTok phenomenon as being wholly organic, at least from his company’s perspective.
Though not necessarily the root of it, the rise of #WaterTok does happen to coincide with at least two key trends. The first is the rise of premium, reusable water bottles, which have over the past five years grown from fashion accessory to status symbol to collector’s items. Currently at the forefront is Stanley, a legacy bottle manufacturer whose Quencher tumblers have grown around 275% year-over-year as of last November, according to Retail Dive, however brands like Yeti, Klean Kanteen and Hydro Flask have also helped to drive the trend.
Wegner suggested that the craze around premium water bottles has helped fuel #WaterTok, as influencers include their drinking vessels as part of their “hydration stations” featured in their videos and the desire to put something more than ordinary water in their colorful tumblers has been a key driver.
“They have collectability on the special tops and the closures and the straws,” Wegner said. “There’s people selling these online, buying them and marking them up and selling them again on eBay.”
The other prime trend has been the pre-existing growth and innovation within the drink mix category, providing consumers with an array of new products to sample and experiment with in their social posts. Circana reported in the 52-week period ending October 8, 2023, sport drink mix sales in U.S. retail were up 49.5% to over $715.4 million and energy drink mixes grew 42.4% to $217.9 million.
Liquid drink mixes, meanwhile, grew a more modest 1.5% to $534.5 million in the same period, as a -0.2% decline in liquid fruit drink mixes dragged the segment down.
How is Jel Sert Building Around #WaterTok?
While the initial sales boost may have caught the business by surprise, Jel Sert is now working to steer the ship and guide the growth. The company has begun promoting its own “recipe” videos on TikTok and is deploying an “As Seen on #WaterTok” logo to be featured on in-store shelf tags and even on a Pure Kick-branded NASCAR car.
The company is also innovating specifically for #WaterTok. Jel Sert is preparing to launch two new Wyler’s Light variety multipacks in the near future featuring vibrant packaging and unique flavors intended to appeal to the tastes of the online community.
The innovations include two 20-pack boxes with four flavors each, one with Lime, Banana, Coconut and Mango, and the other focused on candy-like flavors such as Cotton Candy, Peach Ring, Mermaid (tropical fruit) and Unicorn (sweet icing).
Playing to the trend, the boxes also feature callouts for “TikTok Trend-Inspired Flavors” while the package design attempts to deviate from the typical Wyler’s style in order to pop on video and appeal to Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers.
The mixes are also designed to produce colorful liquids, which again, helps reinforce the shareable social media aspects of the drinks.
“Done are the days of the old private label, generic-looking packages,” Wegner said. “It’s all about excitement in color, and that goes right through to the product.”
The rising sales also demand rising production, and Jel Sert is currently working to add new production lines to its manufacturing facilities to increase production by around 20%.
Last summer, Jel Sert announced several new promotions and hires on its sales and marketing team, with “digital innovation” named a top priority for the business. While Wegner is conscientious that social media trends can come and go quickly, for Jel Sert he said the company is being cautious in its budgeting, but there’s been no signs of a slowdown yet and for now the business is all in on positioning its brands as the center of #WaterTok.
“We’re right in the middle of the storm here,” he said. “We’re in the eye of the hurricane with this whole thing and the focus has been on us with our brands.”