Soft drinks go healthy
Though impacted by healthy lifestyle trends, and a growing demonisation of sugar, there’s no denying that most of us still love a soft drink, especially in the Summer months when hydration and taste cravings go hand-in-hand. According to Statista, UK volumes are set to grow 1% to 2025. So, what could be more shrewd than launching a ‘healthy’ version? We take a look at the new brands changing the narrative.
Fizzy, refreshing, and full of flavour, UK consumers love a soft drink. So much so that the average person in the UK consumes around 120 litres of them a year, according to Statista. And though sales may still be strong, negative headlines around the sugar tax, as well as growing awareness of the health implications of excess consumption have kind of made them, well, not as aspirational as they once were.
Gone are the days of Cindy Crawford, Beyonce, Britney et al gracing iconic campaigns – we’ll skip over 2017’s Kendall Jenner x Pepsi collab. Sure, Gigi Hadid and Kate Moss et al have fronted Coca-Cola campaigns in the past year or so, but they’re not the cultural moments they once were.
Instead, health and wellness are, of course, the mega trends that continue to dominate the fast-moving consumer goods market. And brands are being challenged to find new ways to display these virtues. So, it was only a matter of time before soft drinks and wellness collided. Combining convenience with topping up your probiotics, a raft of new brands are positioning themselves as actively good.
Eco, but make it micro
If you can tick off more than one megatrend with your brand launch, you’ve cracked the code. Tapping into nostalgia for classic soda flavours, eco concerns, and wellness trends, comes Waterdrop. In a canny straddle of both the soft drinks and water markets, the brand is asking us to drink more water, by buying their soda-flavoured water enhancers. Okay, so one of their products is a cola flavour. But it’s an interesting dichotomy.
Built on cutting down packaging waste, specifically the need for plastic bottles, as well as offering a healthy alternative, Waterdrop describes itself as a ‘microdrink’. Combining fruit and plant extracts, compressed into a small cube, you just add water. For its cola flavour for example, the addition of sparkling water to real kola nut and green coffee gives you a sugar- and additive-free alternative to a soda.
Others taking this approach include Spruce; real fruit, no nasties, and to quote them, not as boring as water. Distancing itself from the cordials market its war cry states: “traditional squashes, cordials and water enhancers are packed with nasties, high in sugar and artificial sweeteners, while offering little functional benefit”. Not them, they say. In a nod to functionality, they’re also vitamin enriched, with D, C, B1, B3, B5, B6, B12 – maybe just all the B’s – and some Zinc.
Functional benefits all round
Putting functionality front and centre, and positioning itself squarely as, whisper it, a fizzy drink, is Hip Pop and its “gut lovin soda”. Packed with gut-friendly probiotics, vitamins, and antioxidants, and free from artificial flavours or sweeteners, the brand takes the concept of a kombucha and turns it into a soda instead. Specifically, that means apple cider vinegar is infused into each drink, to satisfy fizzy drink cravings, but aid digestion too. There’s also the addition of Bacillus Coagulans, which sort of sounds like something rude, but is actually a living culture, a bacteria in fact, to again aid gut health.
Celeb spotting
And not too long ago we were asking where were all the celebs when it came to soft drinks? While the booze market was buzzing with celeb launches and endorsements, the then less sexy soft drinks world was practically bereft of a well-known face. Not anymore.
And in fact, Gillian Anderson is here to make it sexy-er. She’s cheekily named her functional soda range, G-Spot. Naughty. And one of them, Arouse, uses a blue flower Clitoria Ternatea (too perfect) or Butterfly Pea, to add antioxidants, ternatins, and maybe boost your sexual desire. The flavour was launched to coincide with the final series of Sex Education, in a moment of marketing gold.
Yet, for all Anderson is leaning into the wink, wink of her brand name, the overall concept is a bit more relaxed than that. Others in the range include: Lift, to energise with red berries, pomegranate, and peppercorn; Protect, designed for immunity with ginger, peppercorn and turmeric; and calming Soothe, with sage, apple, and cornflower. During a moment of self-reflection during the pandemic, the brand lore goes, she came to terms with her levels of consumption of high sugar, caffeinated drinks, and wanted a healthier alternative. Which is a story that mirrors many a consumer’s too. And that’s the point.
Aspiration is now found not only in the lure of a celeb name to a brand – and the grasp of celebrity on the public is a debatable point – but in wellness, and helping consumers to live a better, healthier lifestyle. Healthy soft drinks then, as products with seemingly endless mass appeal, must surely be on the way up?