This article was initially published in the April issue of Global Drinks Intel magazine. For details on how to subscribe click here.
Brands spend months, sometimes years, refining their liquid. But often, when it comes to their serve strategy, it’s a bolt-on left to the newbie in the team. At Impero, we believe serving strategies can unlock substantial growth for brands that understand that consumers drink with their eyes, not their mouths.
There is a brutal truth that nobody in the drinks industry wants to hear – but it’s not as though anyone is trying to keep it a secret. It’s just that, for many, they would rather not hear the truth, as it challenges the principle of what we marketing folk were taught for years. It goes right to the very core of their beliefs on how successful brands are built. For many, when they hear it, they simply don’t believe it. They’ll just turn the page and search out content to reinforce their current beliefs.
So let’s drop that penny for a second…
The brutal truth is consumers don’t really care what the liquid tastes like.
“But why do we spend millions on refining our liquids, undertaking rounds upon rounds of consumer liquid testing? Surely, if it wasn’t important, we wouldn’t spend so much money and time doing it.”
Here’s the thing: what happens in marketing is that we often only measure what we can quantify. We fool ourselves into thinking that by de-risking new products with liquid testing, we will create substantial demand for our product. This is certainly true up to a point. But the bigger point is that we give demonstrably more time and effort to liquid development that can return above market expectations.
You can have the best-tasting liquid in the category, but still, for some reason, nobody will buy it. Let’s use Prime as an example. The journalist James Flanders described the taste of Prime as “a sweet mixture of soapy water with a hint of lemon citrus”. While a review on Amazon said: “The other people who left reviews saying this stuff is good or sweet probably were drugged as kids with NyQuil, or permanently lost their sense of taste during the pandemic – because that’s what this crap tastes like.” Hardly a knockout success in terms of liquid profile, but measuring what can be quantified isn’t the same as measuring what matters.
The fact is, brand perception is what really matters. More often than not, we drink something based on what it says about ourselves, not on how it tastes. And that feeling of the brand can even change your actual perception of the taste of the liquid itself. Just try blind taste testing, comparing own-brand products with named brands, and see the difference that comes back.
Consumers drink with their eyes. Well, it’s not their eyes that counts – it’s what friends and their wider social media following think. In reality, drinks are more similar to jewellery. Drinks are there to mark the occasion and set a tone. Jewellery isn’t really seen by the person wearing it, but it makes them feel a certain way when they have it.
Brands often confuse the heuristic cues of emerging design trends as proof that, for example, kiwi flavour is en vogue or that the pink gin revolution lives on; but these are just outward-facing symbols that commute how we want to be seen, not trends in their own right.
The most critical part to get right when launching a new beverage is the art of the serve, while mature brands should seek to reinvent their classic rituals.
There are three key learnings to that might be worth considering:
- Design it for the ’Gram
This isn’t the same as designing for the consumer or for the shelf. The ’Gram requires a touch of brutalism – legibility from 6ft is now as important as from 1ft.
- Build in an attitude
Serve strategies should embody a mood, not an occasion. ‘How should I feel when I drink this?’ rather than ‘When should I drink this?’
- Spend a little more time on your serve strategy
If you measure what matters, you may get better results by understanding the roles that brands play in consumers’ lives, as opposed to measuring what you can quantify.
This article was initially published in the April issue of Global Drinks Intel magazine. For details on how to subscribe click here.
