If you feel thirsty, you can drink plain water. It has zero calories and quenches your thirst and keeps you hydrated.
But what’s the fun in that? And who will it impress?
No, you want an iconic and quirky drink. Something that has the status only given to celebrity supporters.
This seems to be a mainstream branding strategy among beverage startups. An analysis of Crunchbase data reveals that beverages is an unusually star-studded category for venture investing.
From Beyoncé to Naomi Osaka to Leonardo DiCaprio, a high percentage of heavily funded beverage startups have one or more celebrity investors. These startups are also clustered in the celebrity-rich Los Angeles area.
To illustrate the connection between big-name investors and companies focused on hydration, we’ve compiled a list of 10 venture-backed brands with big-name backers.
It sure looks healthy
Perhaps it says something about our times that an A-list celebrity has chosen to donate his name and cash to support a fairly healthy range of drinks. yeah.
They don’t sell alcoholic drinks or even anything high in sugar or calories. In fact, two of them, Liquid Death and ZenWTR, are best known for plain water.
Some people are jumping on the non-alcoholic beverage bandwagon. The best-known name here is Athletic Brewing, a non-alcoholic craft beer maker that has raised the most venture funding of any company on this list. In second place is Des Sois, a non-alcoholic aperitif maker whose co-founder is pop star Katy Perry.
In fact, the only one likely to make a splash is Cann, a maker of sparkling drinks containing THC and CBD distillates. But even Can’s founders added a healthy angle to their advertising, touting the use of organic agave instead of sugar and that the drink helps “bouncing back from the stresses of everyday life.” I am doing it.
Why does a drink need a celebrity endorsement?
Although we’ve grown accustomed to the idea of celebrity drinks, there’s still something fundamentally strange about the strong association between branding and thirst quenching. After all, most Americans have tap water that is either safe to drink or easily filtered.
Yet, much of our disposable income still goes to beverages. U.S. retail sales of packaged non-alcoholic beverages exceeded $246 billion last year, up 7.5% from a year earlier, according to data from the Beverage Marketing Corporation. This equates to more than $700 per American per year.
Meanwhile, by volume, the most popular packaged beverage of all time is plain water, and we’ve seen marketing-savvy celebrities like Travis Kelsey and Beyoncé dip their toes into this space. It might explain why you’re watching. This is not a new phenomenon either, with BMC estimating that water sales have outstripped carbonated soft drinks sales for at least the past eight years.
Personally, I’ll admit that I’m fascinated by many of the drink options endorsed by celebrities. Filtered tap water may be a cheap and practical option, but carbonated, low-calorie, probiotic, and much-hyped options are all cleverly packaged and properly chilled. It’s hard to compete in a world with so many people.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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