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Taste used to be the main distinguishing factor for Ready-to-Drink (RTD) beverage companies, but now consumers are demanding more than just flavor.
Essential Takeaways
- Trying to get your ready-to-drink beverage to stand out with a new flavor is so yester-year. Strawberry-guava? Yeah, we've seen it.
- Find out why beverage companies are looking to innovate with healthy functional ingredients, and how they're doing it so dang fast!
Today, it’s all about health, function, and ethics, and the beverage industry is expanding and diversifying to meet the new demands.
If you own a beverage company, it’s high time for your brand to capitalize on the health revolution. Here’s how:
- Let’s Be Real...Hydration Needed a Makeover
- How Functional Health Drinks Took Over Instagram
- Capitalize On the Health Wave with Brand Partnerships and Collaborations
Let’s Be Real...Hydration Needed a Makeover
Three out of four Americans are chronically dehydrated, but hydration’s aesthetics were terribly off-point.
Some brands leaned too heavily on the scientific angle, while others had that gas-station-energy-drink-vibe (you know the one).
To make matters worse, traditional “health drinks” are often packed with sugar and artificial ingredients to mask the natural salty taste of electrolytes.
The bottom line? Hydration needed a makeover...BAD.
How Functional Health Drinks Took Over Instagram
It didn’t take long for hip health drinks to crack the code and start crushing it with lifestyle-focused wellness advertising.
As it turns out, consumers like to use Instagram to escape the grind and get in touch with their inner health nerd.
High Brew, which sells cold brew coffee, teleports its followers to lakeside campgrounds and epic mountain ranges.
Labels like “gluten-free” and “non-GMO” used to clutter products, but today’s savvy brands design their packaging with Instagram in mind. They’ve ditched the labels and amped-up the health vibes.
Consumers want to feel fitter, healthier, and happier through wellness-inspired creatives, not just virtue-signaling health badges.
The sparkling CBD beverage Recess, hits this out of the park. They’ve built an entire company around the feeling of being overwhelmed. The solution? Take a Recess.
The moral of the story: now is the time to innovate with functional healthy ingredients.
Capitalize On the Health Wave with Brand Partnerships and Collaborations
Are you ready to put a healthy twist on your RTD beverage?
The way we see it, you’ve got two choices:
A) Invest bookoo-bucks in R&D and create some new, health-tastic product formulas of your own.
or…
B) Add any one of Buoy’s proprietary ready-to-mix wellness boosts to any of your products in order to add healthy function without sacrificing the taste of your drink. Streamline the R&D process and save time and money getting your new functional beverage to market with a brand collaboration!
Brand collaborations and partnerships are becoming popular ways to promote your brand, grow a following, and generate more revenue.
According to a recent AMEX study, mid-sized companies that collaborate at least 5 times a year either save about $320,000 or generate $430,000 in increased sales. Boom-shaka-laka!
Here are a few key ways that brand-on-brand collabs work their magic:
- Reach new customers through cross-promotions
- Create killer content
- Engage your audience
- Grow your social media community
- Expand your network
- Build buzz
- Boost revenue
Buoy-boosted products earn higher profit margins and support higher price points. Our current partners average an additional profit of $0.91 cents per drink.
As a Buoy partner, we’ll treat you like family and...
- Split the cost of a press release
- Highlight your new product on our homepage
- Write a blog about your new product
- Take lifestyle product pictures for you
- Highlight your product with a pinned Instagram highlight
- And of course, we'll tag you on social
Our proprietary hydration formula packs a punch, with just three servings containing more electrolytes than traditional sports drinks. It keeps the nervous system on-point and hangovers at bay—all with zero sugar and zero calories.
We only partner with companies that share our values for being transparent about quality ingredients.
Look for our “Boosted by Buoy” logo on beers, kombucha, coffee, and water, like these bodacious Buoy partners:
- WellBeing Brewing Co
- M Kombucha
- Crunchy Hydration
Here’s what Jeff Stevens, the founder of WellBeing Brewing Co, has to say about working with Buoy:
“Our mission was to create the world’s most hydrating beer but the biggest hurdle was the salty and bitter taste that naturally comes from electrolytes and would ruin the flavor of our drink. It was awesome to find a company that was devoted to overcoming this hurdle and making the production process easy on us.”
Is your brand ready to capitalize on the health revolution? Learn more about Buoy Hydration’s partnership program.
