Lucozade has revealed a trio of new blue drinks across its Sport, Energy and Alert ranges.
Lucozade Sport Blue Force, Lucozade Energy Blue Burst and Lucozade Alert Blue Rush (rsps: from £1/PMP 500ml) will join the Lucozade roster across multiple formats from the end of February.
The NPD blitz – details of which were first revealed by The Grocer in October 2023 – is the first time Lucozade has brought its sub-brands together for a single launch.
Despite being united by their blue colour, however, the three new drinks are different in flavour, with Lucozade inviting shoppers to guess what each variant is in a bid to drive trial.
Blucozade would tap into “a desire from shoppers for excitement and surprise from their soft drink purchases”, Lucozade said. The new drinks were expected “to drive up both purchase frequency and overall consumption within the Lucozade portfolio”, it added.
The launch marked a “a huge change in Lucozade’s marketing strategy”, according to Elise Seibold, marketing director at brand owner Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I.
Suntory would “operate Lucozade as one brand” with unified communication campaigns and co-ordinated launches, Seibold said.
“Consumers see Lucozade as being one brand,” she said. “We have adapted our approach to reflect this.
“Overall we will go [forwards] as one brand, but whenever we need to be specific to one of our sub-brands we will be because each of the brands still has different benefits.”
Read More: Can Lucozade break the soft drinks ‘blueopoly’?
Sales of Lucozade have grown 10.8%, to £554.6m [NIQ 52 w/e 9 September 2023] but the brand has fallen below Monster, which is now the second-biggest sports & energy drinks brand, according to The Grocer’s Top Products Survey 2023.
Some way behind Lucozade but in explosive growth is Prime, the viral US sensation now worth £131.1m [NIQ].
But Prime’s flagship Blue Raspberry flavour was not a motivation for Lucozade’s move into blue drinks, according to Suntory sales director Alpesh Mistry.
“We’re not followers in the category, we’re leaders,” he said. “Prime [Blue Raspberry] is one single flavour, what we have done is brought out three different SKUs with no flavour called out. We’re respectful of competitors but it’s not due to them.”
Lucozade would be “bringing the theatre back into soft drinks” in its activations to support Blucoade’s retail launch, Mistry claimed.
“My prediction is this will be the biggest launch within soft drinks this year in terms of scale,” he said. “You’ll see freestanding display units, you’ll see it in chillers, you’ll see the blue light come to life with LED displays in store.
“We have two seconds to convince a shopper to pick up a new brand or product in store, so it has to be really impactful.”
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