Having a potential consumer sample a product and enjoy it enough to buy it is a key step in the successful launch and development of a new beverage brand. However, few entrepreneurial beverage companies fully understand how to most effectively generate the kind of buzz and excitement that is so important to a brand's success. BeverageSchool.com can help and offers crucial guidance on how to create and execute a successful field marketing and sampling strategy.

As I write this column, summer is easing off and soon it will be time to stow the t-shirts away. (At least it will be for those of you for whom t-shirts don’t qualify yet as year-round “business casual” attire.) So I thought it might be fun to riff on t-shirts, given their inextricable role in the beverage business. After all, folks’ reception to t-shirts can be a great gauge of brand health, particularly in image-driven categories like beer and energy drinks.

It’s that time of the year where beverage companies are looking to add to their team as they prepare for 2013. That’s why we’re pleased to offer a limited time…

You’d think Carl Sweat, the hard-charging CEO of FRS, would have it easy by now. Strong investors, a dynamite functional additive, popular endorsers and clever marketing have been wrapped together into a very cold-box-friendly package. But the company is still fighting it out every day, trying to convince consumers that the quercetin compound that powers the product is worth its sometimes challenging taste and its hard-to-define health benefit.

It’s amazing what distribution can do – look at FUZE, which is coming on strong in single-serve, and at Lipton, which is also showing major growth in what is a very minor part of its line (Brisk). Meanwhile, wouldn’t you love to get a peek at Tum E Yummies’ Wal-Mart numbers, since they just passed Bug Juice in the big four-channel listing? That’s strong growth for a company that continues to move up in the pack.