• ✨ Liquid Death’s ‘Kegs for Pregs’
• 🎧 NPR Talks Poppi-Pepsi Deal
• 🏄 Laird’s The Market Place
• ⭐ Reviews? We Got Em’
• 🍸 New RTD Cocktails
• 🛒 Instacart Enables AI Ads
• 🫧 Pepsi + poppi = Popsi?

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Some of the top names in Bain & Company’s annual insurgent CPG brands list should seem more than a little familiar: Alani Nu, Ghost, Poppi. Do you sense a theme?

The list tracks brands that are shaking up the marketplace by outpacing category growth and mounting serious challenges to established incumbents. But with so many of these “insurgent” players all recently exiting to larger companies – Ghost to KDP, Poppi to PepsiCo and Alani to Pepsi-aligned Celsius – it begs the question, is the insurgency succeeding? And for that matter, why?

It’s far too early to conclude that the young front is successfully overthrowing the old guard, but one thing is clear – strategics are paying attention and rapidly aligning themselves with insurgent players before they find themselves out in the cold as consumers embrace lower calorie drinks and fresh, colorful branding.

And it’s not just the recently-transacted types that are surging per Bain’s review: Black Rifle Coffee and Bloom (both distributed by KDP) and Fever-Tree (aligned with Molson Coors) also made the list. Those without big partnerships also broadly speak for themselves when it comes to cultural impact – be it Olipop or Liquid Death, many of the insurgents are setting the pace for innovation in their sets and reaping big revenues.

All of this year’s 120 insurgent brands, combined, snagged an outsized share of incremental growth in 2024, according to Bain. They drove 39% of incremental category growth while holding less than 2% of total market share in their respective categories. For comparison, last year’s insurgent brands class drove just 17% of incremental growth in 2023.

Narrowing it down to non-alc bevs, the insurgents were responsible for 32% of category growth with under 3% market share.

“Insurgents achieved this outsized share of growth almost entirely through volume expansion,” Bain reported. “While price increases remained low, insurgent volumes grew close to 60% year-over-year in a market where overall volumes were flat.”

Now there’s the question of where the smaller insurgents go next. New entrants on this year’s list included Sol-ti, Bizzy Cold Brew and Counter Culture. Returning names counted Remedy Organics, MALK and Bucked Up. This week’s Poppi exit has shown there are still hungry buyers out there, and whether or not Coca-Cola decides to start flexing its muscle or smaller companies hop in on the game, the wind is clearly in the sales of the insurgents.

Where do you think these brands will go? What else makes an Insurgent unique? Let us know your thoughts at bavery@bevnet.com.

Go Deeper: Read up on the most important deals of 2024

☠️ In Liquid Death’s latest ad spot, Kylie Kelce – podcaster and wife of retired NFL star Jason Kelce – highlights the brand’s latest limited edition product, the mini keg (of water, that is). 

⚽ Sparkling Ice is hitting the pitch, inking a multi-year partnership with Seattle Reign FC and  building on the brand’s position as the official sparkling refreshment of the Seattle Sounders FC. 

🍹 PATRÓN’s latest marketing campaign, “100% Additive-Free Tequila,” showcases the brand’s handcrafted production process and clean ingredient deck, featuring 100% Blue Weber agave, water and yeast. 

Insiders can read about a water boy’s NIL deal, Coke’s “fan work” and more marketing moves on BevNET.

BevNET Managing Editor Martin Caballero was interviewed for NPR’s Morning Edition on Thursday, where he spoke about the beverage trends that helped spark Poppi’s prodigious growth and its eventual sale to Pepsi for $1.65 billion earlier this week. Listen to the segment here.

Laird Superfood is looking deeper into online sales. This week it debuted The Market Place, an ecommerce site featuring “a wellness insiders' collection of brands.”

🛒 The Market Place will drop a limited number of curated, well-being-related product collections throughout the year, ranging from “premium river boards to sustainable activewear and recovery tools.”

🤝 Initial brand partners include Yoloha, VISP, Twinny, Hydrus, North Shore Sauna, and Beach Soul.

🔊 What the CEO said: "With the launch of The Market Place, we're expanding their access to a curated selection of products that align with healthy values and an elevated lifestyle.” - Jason Vieth 

This week at BevNET we rounded up an array of sweet sips including classic soda Slice, a new twist on Töst, a unique line of sparkling ginseng tonics from Ginsa, and THC-infused CSDs from Lolli.

Then, we chronicled our thoughts with each swig, highlighting aspects of the brand, liquid and product positioning that stood out and things the company could consider for next time. 

🆓 Check out this week’s review roundup on BevNET.

Spring has sprung a slate of new RTD cocktail releases. Here’s a sample of a few new beverages on the shelf:

🥃 The classic bar call is getting a splash of vanilla in the latest release from the Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola collaboration. 

🛥️ As far as brand synergy goes, this one is admittedly hard to beat: meet Yacht Water, a new additive-free tequila seltzer from none other than Lil Yachty – make sense now? 

🏀 NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal’s prolific career as a beverage investor continued this week with news that Shaq (aka DJ Diesel) is taking a stake in BeatBox Beverages; to celebrate the news, the RTD cocktail brand is launching a new flavor, Blueberry Lemonade. 

Check out the full lineup of new releases on BevNET.

Instacart is doubling down on AI, releasing a new suite of products aimed at reducing complexity and driving performance for brand partners. 

🧑‍💻 New AI-powered offerings include universal ad campaigns, landing pages and ads manager as well as an enhanced product library. 

📲 Universal campaigns allow advertisers to make one campaign with a single budget that is then optimized across multiple ad formats. The business selects their objectives and Instacart handles budget allocation and format optimization.

💻 Landing pages enable quick creation of shoppable brand destinations including product showcases and custom copy. 

• Celsius has tracked a 20% increase in campaign-attributed sales in an early test 

🗣️ "We're motivated to use the latest technology to help our brand partners succeed in an increasingly complex advertising landscape. As the retail media space continues to mature, brands face more choices than ever about where and how to reach consumers,” - Ali Miller, VP of Ads Product at Instacart

The news of poppi’s acquisition by PepsiCo was unsurprising to many, but it does lead to bigger questions about what the future holds for the better-for-you soda category and when the next move will come from other beverage strategics (looking at you, Coke and KDP). 

Monica, Brad and Lukas go through the top-level news before musing on how poppi will evolve within Pepsi’s structure, what’s next for Olipop and what this means for the rest of the prebiotic soda brands flooding the market.

Click here to listen to this week’s episode. Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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